Donald Trump is preparing the ground for the election contest

A few months before the November 2026 elections - the midterm elections for Congress, Donald Trump offered the public, in a speech delivered at the end of last week, the explanation for any unfavorable outcome: if the Republicans win, his vigilance has saved democracy; if they lose, China, cars, foreigners, postal votes, the press and the "deep state” are already lined up in the dock.

This is the essential political result of the televised speech addressed to the American nation on the evening of July 16, in which - according to ABC News, PBS News, NBC News, CNBC News, CNN -, the US president combined real information, possible vulnerabilities, unfinished investigations and figures taken out of context to claim that the American electoral system is so compromised that only the measures he proposed can save it. The only thing missing from this demonstration was proof that any of the alleged irregularities actually changed the outcome of an election.

Donald Trump announced the declassification of documents that would show that Beijing obtained data on 220 million American voters. The incident, if its scale is confirmed, represents a serious security problem, but access to an electoral database does not mean access to the ballot box. The sources cited claim that names, addresses, political affiliations and voting history are, in many states, public information or available to parties and specialized vendors. Moreover, the same sources claim that Trump has mixed up data collection, influencing public opinion and manipulating the election result, although these are different phenomena. The documents may demonstrate the first two risks, but they do not show that Beijing fabricated votes or changed the outcome of the 2020 election. Even John Solomon, a conservative adviser involved in examining the files, admitted after President Trump's speech that the US services have no evidence that a foreign power had altered any vote in the 2020, 2022 or 2024 elections. The US president went further and claimed that the FBI had obtained information about a Chinese attempt to manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden. However, the sources cited claim that this was raw information, that is, unverified and uncorroborated. To turn the accusation into fact, the ballots, the network that allegedly produced them, their route and proof that they reached the ballot boxes would have to be presented. Nothing in the published materials proves this, most of the American media also show. In effect, Donald Trump transformed the existence of information about a possible attempt into confirmation of a completed fraud, considerably shortening the path between suspicion and sentence.

The "deep state” immediately entered the story. According to the American president, service officials would have hidden reports, altered presidential briefings and sent documents in bags intended for destruction. If credible information was eliminated for political reasons, an investigation is necessary. But internal emails, disputes between analysts and the presence of materials in "burn bags” - containers commonly used for the controlled destruction of classified documents - do not alone prove a criminal conspiracy. However, Trump has called for dismissals and possible criminal prosecutions before the investigation he himself requested begins.

The documents on the electoral infrastructure do not prove what the president claims, the sources cited claim. Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and non-state actors have the technical capacity to attack databases, electronic registries and electoral websites. The existence of the capability, however, does not prove that the attack was successful or that the votes were altered. The example invoked by Trump regarding the digital manipulation of the elections by the Nicolas Maduro regime concerns Venezuela, not the United States. The White House has published evidence of cyber risks, and the president has presented it as evidence of fraud that has already been committed.

The figure of 278,000 foreign citizens who are said to be on the electoral rolls also remains unconfirmed, according to the sources cited. The Trump administration has not presented a sufficient methodology to establish how the homonymous names, administrative errors, and the situations of naturalized persons were eliminated between updating a database and registering to vote. Moreover, an erroneous appearance in a register does not prove the exercise of the vote. Trump has gone from an insufficiently explained computer match to the image of a quarter of a million foreigners ready to decide the leadership of the US.

Mail-in voting has been declared "inherently corrupt", although according to the American press, studies of the 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2022 elections estimated an average fraud rate of about four cases per ten million postal votes. There are incidents and vulnerabilities, but not enough evidence of fraud to change the national results. The mail-in ballot seems to become suspect especially when opened in a state lost by Donald Trump.

By the end, the speech's goal became explicit: passing the "Save America Act,” introducing photo ID and proof of citizenship, limiting mail-in voting, and rapidly removing people deemed ineligible from the rolls. Some of these measures can be legitimately debated. Protecting databases, updating registries, keeping paper ballots, and auditing results are necessary. The problem is that Donald Trump is not promoting them as preventative measures, but as a response to widespread fraud that his own documents do not demonstrate.

According to the sources cited, the American electoral system is vulnerable, and foreign powers are trying to collect data, influence public opinion, and exploit domestic divisions, but all of this justifies vigilance and transparency, not a verdict that the election was stolen.