July 16, 2026: Address to the Nation on Election Security

Transcript

Good evening. Before we begin, I'm proud to report that our country is safer, stronger, and far wealthier than it has ever been before. We are doing great.

Less than two years ago, we inherited an economic and social disaster after the worst inflation in 48 years, the wide-open borders with millions and millions of people pouring in from all over the world, including criminals of all types, and 11,888 murderers, many of whom killed more than one person.

We had transgender for everybody, men in women's sports, crime ravaging our cities and the whole world was laughing at us as a nation, but not anymore. Two years ago, our country was dead. Now, we are the hottest country anywhere in the world.

America is respected like we have never been respected before. We have more money being invested in the United States than at any time in the history of our country.

More Americans are working today than ever before. This week, it was announced that inflation saw the largest monthly decline in more than six years. Just happened. It was just given out. The media reported it, and we accept it. The best in six years.

The tax cuts in our great, big, beautiful bill are saving hardworking families thousands and thousands of dollars. Like with the provisions, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security for our great seniors, along with the interest deduction on a loan used to purchase a car, but only if that car is made in America, and a 100% expensing for our job-creating businesses.

Our stock markets are at their highest point in many years, but we can actually say of all time. And your 401Ks, pensions, and retirement accounts are setting records every single day, the highest in history.

For years, we paid the highest price for prescription drugs anywhere in the world. Now we pay the lowest price under my most favored nations policy because I was able to get the rest of the world and the pharmaceutical companies to act responsibly. Drug prices are coming down by 70%, 80%, and 90%. Trumprx.gov, this will ultimately reduce the cost of healthcare.

You have to go to Trumprx.gov and take advantage of it.

But the cost of healthcare is coming way down because of what we've done with prescription drugs.

And with Trump accounts, every child in America now has access to a tax-free investment account to save for their future. Billions and billions of dollars are being invested, put in by companies and individuals to take care of our children so that at age 18, they will have potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in their account, and they'll get off to a great start in life.

So for that, go to trumpaccounts.gov and sign up your child or any child you'd like to sign up.

Our previously wide-open borders have been transformed into the most secure borders in the history of our country, with zero illegal aliens being admitted to the United States in the past 14 months. That is zero. Nobody thought it was possible.

We had the worst border in the history of our country, and now we have the best. Crime is plummeting nationwide, with the murder rate at its lowest level since 1900, or more than 125 years ago.

We're making a record investment in our armed forces, and we have the strongest and most powerful military, by far, anywhere in the world. I built it during my first term, and unfortunately, we're forced to use it now.

We won in Venezuela, which is now working with us to produce millions and millions of barrels of oil.

We are likewise winning big in Iran, and you will see the fruits of that labor very, very shortly.

America is back and doing really well, but we still have a major challenge that must be urgently addressed because no country can be great without fair and honest elections.

You have to trust your country because if there can be no trust, there can be no greatness, and that's very simple. No trust, no greatness.

For many years, I've called for bold, swift, and decisive action to protect the integrity of America's elections.

Every American deserves to know that when they cast their vote, that vote will be counted accurately in a system, and that is to make that system secure, one where cheating and interference are not just difficult, but virtually impossible.

Unfortunately, the system we have today falls catastrophically short of that standard.

Tonight, I'm announcing the immediate declassification and release of critical intelligence revealing shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure. This evidence shows that the election system we have dangerously exposes and really exposes like levels never thought possible to hacking, exploitation, and foreign interference.

Just as disturbingly, this vital information has for many years been covered up and hidden from you, the American people, our beautiful, our great American people.

But that all changes right now. The documents we will release starting tonight have been gathered by the White House Government Transparency Task Force, a great group of people, along with the staff of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, supported by our top intelligence agency chiefs, who have all personally reviewed the findings we are presenting this evening and fully confirmed their authenticity.

You can see these documents for yourself at whitehouse.gov. That's whitehouse.gov. Go check it out.

Our purpose in disclosing this information is not to weaken confidence in election, but to earn that confidence by confronting vulnerabilities and correcting them very, very quickly. And that's what we're doing.

The documents cover five major areas of concern. First, they show that over a period of years, starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People's Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China's illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files.

That information includes names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences, and other sensitive data that would be needed to register to vote and engage in other nefarious activities, which is exactly what was happening.

This data loss presents an unprecedented election security nightmare. The intelligence even shows that China assigned a data exploitation unit specifically to this new project.

Compounding the travesty, the second set of documents we are releasing reveals that members of the deep state, very, very famous group of people, many cases, in our intelligence agency worked to actively suppress and downplay information about the extent of China's sinister election meddling, covering it up from both the President and the American people like nobody thought was possible.

U.S. spy agencies began learning about the compromise of voter registration files in 2020 when they discovered that tens of millions of voter data, think of that, tens of millions of voters' data in 18 states have been bought, stolen, or hacked by China.

Yet those responsible for sounding the alarm instead kept the information secret and hidden. They did not disclose to me as President or to anyone else, and to the best of our knowledge, they did not inform Congress. In fact, all they kept saying is, "This is the most secure election in the history of our country." A standard, very pat line that was divvied out to say.

The coverup of this colossal security breach is even more disturbing in light of the additional information showing that China engaged in other election-related activities to undermine my first administration and our 2020 campaign. They did not want, and they just didn't want it. They fought like hell not to have a Donald Trump to win, and for good reason.

As the documents we are releasing show, CIA reporting explicitly stated, and I quote, "In mid-2018, the Chinese Communist Party's policy was to leverage all domestic and foreign elements that were opposed to the U.S. president in an effort to reduce the U.S. president's votes and make him resign or prevent his re-election." Isn't that nice?

Also, in mid-2018, China was working to influence the results of the U.S. midterm elections, and later, the results of the 2020 presidential election itself.

Separately, in mid-2019, the Chinese government's strategy against the United States was focused on undermining domestic confidence in the U.S. president. They wanted to just make you sound like your president wasn't so hot when actually your president has done a great job, and they did everything possible to do exactly that.

Going on, this document says, and this is by the CIA, "The strategy included efforts to use Chinese contacts with big U.S. companies to influence U.S. business leaders to turn against the President of the United States of America. The Chinese government sought to identify U.S. journalists who had reported negatively on the U.S. president and pay them large sums of money to write more negative articles about him, as many as they could, and they didn't care what they said. The Chinese government wanted U.S. president to lose the next election."

And the reason they wanted me to lose is because they knew I was wise to them, charged them billions and billions of dollars worth of tariffs, and built the strongest military anywhere in the world. We have the strongest military anywhere in the world.

These are exact quotes from the CIA reporting. The name of the person doing the quote is now under review, but it gets even worse.

Raw intelligence obtained by the FBI in 2020, yet buried by rogue bureaucrats, stated that China's activities even included an attempt to manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden.

Documents show that during this period, dozens of significant CIA and NSA reports about China's election targeting were kept out of the presidential briefing. These were briefings I would get almost every day. Everything was kept out that was of importance.

One email among intelligence analysts admitted that they had, quote, "Deliberately massaged the presidential daily briefing to withhold information regarding Chinese activities related to the election."

Another official inside the FBI wrote that she was running, quote, "A shadow government," unquote, to keep intelligence about China's election meddling from becoming known and to keep it away from the honorable press. Other officials who witnessed such efforts perceived the motivations to be blatantly political.

Recently, we found significant numbers of burn bags in formation, and this is a group of bags that were used to destroy information given by President Barack Hussein Obama to be burned. It was supposed to be burned. These bags were supposed to be at a different level by different people, incinerated and checked, but it never happened. Maybe we got lucky.

We believe this was not done on purpose, but rather through gross incompetence of the people that were supposed to burn the bags. But the findings are stunning.

Today, I'm asking the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the CIA to investigate how and why such crucial information was hidden, to fire those involved in the cover-up, and to file criminal charges if appropriate against these people.

Yet concealing China's meddling was only the beginning. The third set of documents we are releasing proves that for many years, Americans were blatantly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure, including electronic voting machines and ballot counting systems. Dishonest, almost all. They're vulnerable, and they're easily compromised, and people within our government knew that.

Tonight, we're publishing a series of previously classified U.S. intelligence community assessments and other reports proving that our government has long known these machines are extremely exposed to attack.

As one assessment states, "We judge that the United States adversaries, including at a minimum Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, as well as non-state groups, have the capability to compromise U.S. election infrastructure." That's unquote, but that's some statement, isn't it, made by supposedly great patriots of our country.

The document goes on to further state that, quote, "We assess that centralized election-related data repositories such as voter registration databases, poll books, and other official election websites are most vulnerable to exploitation, and adversaries could use this access to these systems to disrupt election processes within the United States of America."

Tonight, we're releasing all of those findings and spanning from January 2020 to June 2026. This is a cyber threat aimed at the very heart of our democracy. Many people have questioned whether it could actually be possible to electronically manipulate vote totals or change election results on these terrible machines.

Today, we are releasing documents that show the CIA obtained reporting of a specific plot to do a big number in favor of the corrupt Maduro regime in Venezuela, and that's exactly what happened, conspiring to digitally rig their own country's elections in 2020, and that's what they did.

This reporting included precise details about methods to regime develop to digitally alter vote totals in ways that could not be detected, even with an audit, no matter how deep they went.

This intelligence underscores why we must take urgent action to ensure that our own system can never, ever be hacked or compromised like it was in the past.

The fourth set of documents reveals that even when significant evidence of fraud has been detected, it has been buried and covered up. Among the disclosures tonight are FBI files detailing evidence of alleged fraud by a large-scale voter registration operation in Michigan.

In 2020, Michigan state police raided a Democrat get-out-the-vote organization, corrupt group, in Muskegon, and were so concerned by what they found. They were just so concerned, they couldn't believe it actually, that they contacted the FBI in Detroit.

The documents state that some canvassers admitted to FBI agents that they signed voter registration forms in other people's names, submitted fraudulent registration for people who did not exist, and received gift cards tied to their number of applications that they produced.

In other words, it was pay, play, and cheat. The FBI agents working on the case believe that crimes were committed, yet the Biden Department of Justice slow-walked the investigation and killed it.

Tonight, I'm asking the FBI director to ensure that the matter is fully investigated and to work with the Department of Justice to prosecute those responsible for any crimes.

Finally, to reveal just how vulnerable our elections continue to be, we are releasing the results of a stunning investigation by the Department of Homeland Security. According to the DHS review, state voter rolls, and public records, they identified approximately 278,000 non-citizens who are registered to vote in federal elections.

Since Democrat states refuse to share their voter files, the real number is actually much higher than that. Yet, even this limited analysis found more than a quarter of a million foreigners illegally registered to vote.

Put together, these disclosures reveal an election system so broken and so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it. It is not defensible. Hundreds of millions of U.S. voter files are in the hands of foreign governments. Our machines and ballot counting systems are exposed to hacking, and manipulation, and corruption.

China and other countries have been trying to meddle in our elections. Evidence of fraud has been buried. Hundreds of thousands of non-citizens and dead people are listed and active on the voter rolls, and yet we still have elections with no voter ID, no proof of citizenship, and tens of millions of ballots floating aimlessly through the mail.

As one example of the insanity, California's recent election for mayor of LA and governor was held on June 2nd, a long time ago, but it was just completed a few days ago on July 10th. Think of that, much more than one month. Took a month to count the votes. I wonder what they were doing.

This is worse than any third world country. There's no third world country that has elections like we have.

In a rare move, NBC and ABC fake news have both said that they would not cover this speech. They knew what it was about. Because of the fact that they don't like the topic, because they know how corrupt our system is, and they don't want to reveal it. They and others in the media are part of a plot. They want to continue this fraud for whatever reason. They want to keep it going. They want to protect the radical left.

They can't have a great country, and that's true. You can't have a great country without free and fair elections. Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses. They use our public multi-billion dollar in value airways for absolutely no money. They pay nothing.

All we want is honesty in our elections and honesty in reporting. They pay nothing for multi-billion dollar assets.

Great damage has been done to our country. Our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen, and the trust of the American people was lost. This cannot be allowed to continue.

Every American, whether you're a Republican, Democrat, independent, or otherwise, should be able to agree that we deserve the most secure, honest, and fair election system anywhere in the world. Secure elections should be apartisan, really. We should be together, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, everybody, and it should not be a partisan issue. It should cause to unite us, not to divide us. This should be a cause. We should be united, not divided.

In light of the brand-new and irrefutable information I have revealed tonight, my administration is in the process of notifying the states whose election data was compromised by the People's Republic of China and many others.

We will be working closely to mitigate any harm, and we're taking swift action to ensure that sensitive voter data is better protected so we can never be bought, we can never be hacked, and we can never watch a stolen election again.

Tomorrow, the Secretary of Homeland Security will hold a briefing to outline his department's recent work confirming cyber vulnerabilities in our electronic voting systems. They are bad.

We're in the process of informing governors, senators, and members of Congress of potential issues in their states. If you look at voting today, it's in such bad shape in so many states, and we are committing to fix it, and we're also committing to be working with those states and local jurisdictions to help them fix and patch known technical vulnerabilities before the midterm elections.

We have very important elections coming up. We want those elections to be honest.

I've also ordered DHS to notify every state about non-citizens on their voter rolls and direct them to remove all ineligible voters from the lists immediately.

But most importantly, addressing this crisis of election security demands that Congress must pass the Save America Act.

How easy is that to do unless you want to cheat?

The only reason you wouldn't do it is you want to cheat because your policies are so bad, and your candidates are so pathetic that you can't get away or can't get elected any other way.

This landmark bill requires that all voters must show photo voter ID. How simple is that? Could I have your photo, please? Photo voter ID.

All voters must provide proof of citizenship. Are you a citizen of our country, please?

And hopefully, there will be no corrupt mail-in ballots, which if you watched California and so many other places, mail-in ballots are inherently corrupt. So you would have no mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, military deployment, or travel if you're going away on business or vacation.

These reforms are urgently needed to stop the vulnerabilities that I've mentioned.

To all Americans, I ask you to pick up your phone tomorrow, call your representatives in the House and Senate, and demand that they pass the Save America Act without delay.

Together, we will restore faith and confidence in our country, and we will be bigger, better, and stronger than ever before.

Thank you. God bless you. God bless our great military, and God bless America.

Thank you very much.