Trump gave his speech to the nation in prime time on Friday night. Image: Keystone
Donald Trump gave his speech to the nation on Friday night. The most important thing in 7 points.
July 17, 2026, 04:10July 17, 2026, 06:45
A few months before the midterm elections for the US Congress, President Donald Trump has once again aroused mistrust in fair and free elections in his own country – including allegations of attempted Chinese influence in the 2020 elections.
The most important thing from the 25-minute speech in seven points.
Boycott of some TV channels
The politics surrounding Trump’s speech began before it even started. Because some of the largest TV stations in the USA refused to broadcast the speech live on linear television. ABC, CNN and NBC decided to show the speech only online and only start reporting after Trump’s appearance. MSNBC and CBS only showed some excerpts, while Fox News showed the speech in full.
Video: watson/nina bürge
In the last few days, there have been repeated calls, especially from the Democratic camp, not to show Trump’s speech. For example, Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said: “I don’t think we should help spread lies about our election.” We have an ethical obligation “not to publish content that undermines our choices and is not based on evidence and facts,” said Ocasio-Cortez.
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.Image: Keystone
China’s alleged interference
Trump focused primarily on China in his speech. He accuses the People’s Republic of having committed what is probably the “biggest theft of election data in history” for years.
Trump claimed that China had acquired 220 million US voter data. In addition, China paid journalists for critical reporting about itself, said the US President.
The government has published thousands of documents intended to support this claim. “This data loss represents an unprecedented nightmare for election security,” said Trump.
However, the documents that the administration has published are heavily redacted. The “New York Times” writes“that they are far more cautious in their conclusion” than Trump indicated in his speech. In addition, most of the documents were already publicly known.
Trump on alleged Chinese interference in 2019: “They focused on undermining confidence in the US president. They wanted to just want you sound like your president wasn’t so hot, when actually your president has done a great job.” pic.twitter.com/V7c67HjYhb
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 17, 2026
As early as 2020, American intelligence analysts discovered that Chinese intelligence services had analyzed voter registration data from several states. The report published later At the time, however, it expressly stated that China had not changed any election dates or manipulated any other election processes.
Voting machines and postal voting
Postal voting was also a topic that Trump discussed at length, a core topic of his claim about the alleged election fraud in 2020. This was unsafe, he emphasized in his speech. Voting machines are also vulnerable to fraud, Trump said. At the same time, he demanded that voters have to identify themselves in the future.
However, the attempt to restrict postal voting is also met with rejection within his own party, especially in states that rely heavily on postal voting.
Postal voting is a thorn in Trump’s side.Image: Keystone
Accusations of election fraud have been repeatedly refuted
“Every American has the right to know that their vote will be counted correctly in an election,” Trump said. You need a system in which fraud and interference are practically impossible. “Unfortunately, the system we have today falls catastrophically short of this standard.”
Alleged fraud in the 2020 elections has long been and repeatedly refuted. Numerous investigations, audits, recounts and lawsuits covered the 2020 election, none of which found widespread voter fraud.
The documents that the Trump administration has now published do not support these claims, as the New York Times writes.
The “Save America Act”
Trump also used his speech to pressure Congress to pass the Save America Act. The law stipulates, among other things, that citizens must prove their citizenship when registering to vote. Photo ID must also be presented for federal elections. However, the law faces resistance in the Senate from Democrats and some Republicans.
Just a sentence about the Iran war
While many US citizens are concerned about high gas prices and dissatisfaction over the Iran war, Trump spoke almost exclusively about elections. He only mentioned the war in Iran, which has escalated again in the past few days, in one sentence.
Democrat expressed doubts about the evidence
Trump based his allegations, among other things, on raw material from secret services or statements from individual officials. That’s exactly what Jim Himes, the highest-ranking Democrat on a House intelligence committee, warned about Trump’s speech.
Jim Himes.Image: keystone
“Sources are sometimes unreliable” – and raw data collected by secret services is full of falsehoods, he wrote in a guest article in the New York Times. “A robust intelligence analysis combines hundreds of different sources of information with expertise to create something we can verify and trust.”
(With material from the news agencies sda and dpa)