Trump raises doubts about election interference ahead of US midterms

Donald Trump has again raised doubts about the legitimacy of US elections, as the country heads towards mid-terms in November.

The US president used a primetime address on Thursday night to dispute his loss in 2020 and to appeal for more restrictive voting laws, despite his theories about election interference having been debunked.

“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,” he said.

He went as far as to say that US elections were “worse than any Third World country”.

Critics have accused Trump of trying to sow confusion and spread misinformation ahead of the mid-terms, which could see Republicans lose control of one or both houses of Congress.

A previous intelligence assessment found no evidence that foreign interference had impacted the outcome of the 2020 presidential race, which he lost to Joe Biden.

Trump has long claimed the election was stolen from him, despite dozens of court cases finding no proof of widespread fraud. He did not raise doubts about his election wins in 2016 or 2024.

Major television networks ABC and NBC, along with CNN, opted not broadcast Trump’s address on their main channels, leading the president to claim they were involved in a “plot” and should lose their licences.

Trump focused on Chinese interference in parts of his speech, but avoided criticising Chinese President Xi Jinping directly, and did not mention Russia at all in reference to the elections, despite intelligence officials having said the country engaged in wide-ranging influence campaigns intended to boost Trump’s results in 2016 and 2020.

Trump’s focus on interference in the run-up to the midterms suggests how he could try to undermine results later in the year if he does not like the result.

While the president revealed a series of newly declassified documents relating to the 2020 election, analysis by ITV News’ US partner CNN found that they largely covered previously known potential vulnerabilities in the system, including in relation to Chinese interference, and did not provide any evidence to show that votes had been manipulated or that the 2020 election had been altered.

After the speech all 24 Democratic governors put out a statement alleging Trump intended to “intimidate and silence voters”.

“It’s deeply alarming that President Trump continues to try to undermine free and fair elections,” the Democratic governors said. “No amount of lies and conspiracy theories can change the fact that our country’s elections have repeatedly been proven to be safe and secure.”

Election security experts have said that America’s decentralised voting system, where states are in charge of individual systems rather than the federal government, is a strength.

Americans vote in more than 10,000 different jurisdictions with different rules, making the nations’ elections complicated but safe from widespread fraud.