Trump is busy framing elections.
Trump said his address on Thursday night was about building public confidence in American elections, but he spent much of his speech undermining them.
A broken election system is one of Mr. Trump’s most common refrains, dating to early 2016.
“Great damage has been done to our country,” the president said. “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.”
But documents Mr. Trump released to support his claims — and previous assessments from the intelligence community — do not back up his most aggressive statements about election security. In fact, some of the documents reach the opposite conclusion.
What a surprise!
Trump has spent the first part of his second term dismantling the election protections built up over previous years. The F.B.I.’s task force on foreign influence was shut down, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence sharply cut back a task force that warned against foreign meddling and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has been gutted.
And Mr. Trump has appointed an heir to a housing fortune with no relevant experience as the interim director of national intelligence.
The weaker the system, the easier it is for Trump to do whatever he wants all the time.
For weeks, Mr. Trump has been pressuring Congress to pass a broad election bill to curb mail-in voting, provide documentary proof of citizenship and show photo identification to vote.
Mr. Trump ended his speech with a call to Congress to pass it, despite Republican resistance.
“Addressing this crisis of election security demands that Congress must pass the SAVE America act,” Mr. Trump said. “The only reason you would not do it is you want to cheat. Because your policies are so bad. And your candidates are so pathetic.”
Sir, look in the mirror, sir. The pathetic candidate is you.
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