Front Burner - Trump’s ‘big lie’ in prime-time

Episode Date: July 20, 2026

In a nationally televised address last week U.S. President Donald Trump repeated claims about fraud and foreign interference in the 2020 election, and announced the release of declassified documents he says reveal a government cover-up.But with the midterms approaching, there remains much concern that Trump's speech, and his years-long conspiracies, aren’t really about the election he lost, but the midterm elections still to come.David A. Graham is a staff writer at The Atlantic who has reported extensively on the threats facing American elections. He joins us to examine Trump's latest claims, the evidence behind them, and whether the president is laying the groundwork for America's next election crisis.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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Hey everybody, it's Jamie. Nearly six years ago now, Donald Trump refused to accept the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. That refusal culminated in an attack on the Capitol, dozens of failed court challenges, and years of claims that American democracy itself had been subverted. And now two years into his term as president, it has become abundantly clear that the conspiracy, which was functional, functionally resolved through the courts many years ago, remains in the eyes of the president and his accolades an open matter. Last week, President Trump returned to deliver a prime time address

from the East Room of the White House devoted almost entirely to the legitimacy of American elections. He repeated long-standing claims about fraud and foreign interference, announced the release of declassified documents that he said would expose a cover-up, and suggested the country faces a crisis of election integrity, despite years of investigation, finding no evidence of widespread fraud in 2020. 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.

Much of it revolves around China, who the president has accused of interfering in the U.S. election system. To many, the speech represents a kind of work. worst case scenario, which involves the president creating the conditions to declare a national emergency, and ultimately a pathway to subvert or rig the upcoming midterm elections in his favor. David A. Graham is a staff writer with The Atlantic, and he's done a lot of reporting on the state of American elections. As we get closer to the midterms, he is our guest today. David, thank you so much for making the time.

Thank you for having me. So let's, of course, begin with this speech in question. On Thursday evening, Donald Trump delivered the kind of speech that presidents typically reserve for wars or national emergencies in anticipation of the address, one pro-Trump Republican senator Bernie Moreno referred to it as what could be the most significant presidential address since the Cuban missile crisis. And just talk to me about what we heard from Donald Trump and what you made of the argument that he's making. I think you've referred to it as a cry of frustration. Yeah, it was a little bit of an anticlimactic speech, given the kind of hype that we were hearing from the White House and his allies.

What we heard from Trump was laying out a mixture of, you know, old theories, recycled theories about election fraud, misrepresenting some things and kind of innuendo based on unclear documents. And, you know, I think it fell short of the fears of some people that he would declare a national emergency or take some sort of drastic step. What I see in this speech is a president who has been trying a variety of steps to change the rules of the election or to tilt the rules for the election ahead of November's midterms and has really not had a lot of success. And I think this is a little bit of his attempt to regain the upper hand. And I'm not sure it's working. What do you make of the specific accusation that Trump was making essentially that both China and elements of the U.S. government, subverted the 2020 election, that it was kind of organized cover up. So there's a couple things there.

I think on China, you know, we know that foreign governments like to, you know, have a presence in American elections. They have a rooting interest because of American foreign policy. And the things he's saying about China, you know, that China acquired voter data, by the way, most of that is publicly available or much of that. And that it, you know, it had an interest in the election. That is stuff we've known before. And there's not really a great deal of new information.

What he didn't say is that there was any evidence that China or anybody else had changed vote totals or it interfered with ballots. As to the claims about, you know, American interference, again, there's just no evidence for the claims he's making. And some of the documents that purport to support this are really too heavily redacted to make any, I think, firm conclusions. And what about this purported document from the Department of Homeland Security claiming to have found 250,000 non-citizens registered? And I think it was California, New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. You know, we need to see more of the details. But what I would say is we have heard claims like that repeatedly going back well before Trump, 15, 20 years. And almost, in fact, every time these claims have been made, they fall apart on closer inspection.

The methods that are used tend to be a little bit overly broad or there's false positives or there's false negatives. We have had extensive auditing of these lists and consideration and lawsuits and attempts to find widespread non-citizen voting. And we have simply never had any evidence that it is a major phenomenon. Ostensibly about relitigating 2020, so many of Trump's recent comments about the integrity of American elections. do seem to be forward-looking in some way. And so in what ways do you see this, just tell me more about in what ways you see this as also about elections to come?

I think there's two big things. The most sort of pressing thing is this bill called the Save America Act that is stalled in Congress. And it would do a variety of things. But the big headline is that it would require voters to produce proof of citizenship in order to register. 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... That's something even Republicans in the Senate who tend to agree that we need things like photo ID to vote, think that it goes too far and think that it's really too late to

implement for this election. And Trump has been very upset about that about their lack of progress. He's made various threats and has been complaining on his social media site. So there's that. I think more broadly, Trump has been trying to inject doubt into the lead up to the 2020-6 elections. And it's not clear what the endgame is. There are experts who think that he will try to declare a national emergency or he will

try to have the election thrown out or he'll try to have, you know, candidates rejected. And for those people, you know, January 6th offers. and his legal wrangling after the 2020 election offers a good preview of what that might look like. But we don't really know. After listening to the speech on Thursday night, are you more inclined to think that he might call a national emergency or less? I think perhaps less. I was curious to see what he would say, and I thought this might be a major moment. And instead it felt like, again, just a rehash of old things, not a lot of.

action. At the end, he called for Congress to pass this law. 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. Maybe more worryingly, he sort of seemed to threaten the ability to of major TV networks to be on the air, but that's a different kind of issue. I think the big problem for Trump is that it is a lot easier to intervene and subvert a close election than an election that has some distance. And right now, polls suggest that this election may not be that close, that Democrats are

going to fare okay. And that's what you hear coming from a lot of Republicans in Congress, too. I also don't think that talking about election fraud in 2020 is doing a lot to bring voters along and help him in the 2026 election. Why do you think he's so seized with it? Just tell me more about why you think he's doing this and making this speech then. Well, I would go back even as far as 2016. Trump has had this obsession with elections.

He has never really gotten over people pointing out that he won the electoral college vote in 2016, but not the popular vote. And he has insisted that he won the popular vote or would have if there hadn't been cheating. He's still embittered about losing the 2020 election. I think cuts against his impression of being a winner in all situations. And he, you know, exists in an environment of misinformation and disinformation where these claims about non-citizen voting circulate.

And, you know, to what extent he really believes these things, I think it's hard to tell and it's maybe irrelevant. But I think it's about trying to advantage his movement and his party, ultimately. You mentioned the media organizations, several of the major American networks declined to carry the president's speech live. Even Fox distanced itself from the claims. Also heard the president make claims that electronic voting machines are vulnerable and easily compromised. Fox News has not seen that evidence yet, is not in a position to evaluate the accuracy of the president's statements and claims at this time. As you mentioned, Trump's subsequently called for the licenses of the ABC and NBC to be revoked.

What have he made of the way in which legacy media handles Trump's election-related canards? I think we're seeing some progress. In the past, we've seen major networks carry these Trump speeches live, where he has said a lot of things that are simply not true or not supported. And, you know, some of them have done a really good job retroactively fact-checking that. But I think it's probably not a good idea and probably irresponsible to expose listeners and viewers to those things without some sort of context. So I think that is a sign of progress and of the networks kind of learning how to deal with this. Has the United States in its nearly 250 year history ever face this kind of threat to the integrity of its elections? There have been moments of danger. You know, there have been elections that were disputed and elections where there may have been widespread change.

cheating. But I think we've never seen something quite like this to see a president who both has the power to meddle with elections and also seems determined to undermine faith in elections is something new. Even if these things don't work, if voters don't trust elections, if they don't trust when their candidates lose, they don't believe that, you know, they're frustrated, but that's the majority will. Then it's very hard to have a functioning democracy. And so these sorts of assaults on that Ben Rock faith, I think, are a long-term challenge even past 26 or 2028. I want to ask you about Georgia specifically.

Trump has a particular focus on the state of Georgia. He famously implored Georgia's top elections official to find 11,000 votes in 2020 to help him win the presidential election in a conversation that was caught on the phone. I just want to find 11,000. 780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state. I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.

There's nothing wrong with saying that, you know, that you've recalculated. And it's now being reported that he's pursuing a strategy to declare the state's two Democratic senators, John Ossef and Raphael Warnock, as illegitimate. Ossef in particular has said, that we understand the president may be threatening to declare sitting United States senators illegitimate if that is the course of action he pursues he is calling Georgia voters illegitimate from the very moment Georgia voters rejected him in 2020 he's been on the war path because he was humiliated by the rebuke that Georgians dealt him and he was humiliated

and furious in particular as a committed lifelong racist that it was black voters in Georgia who are instrumental in his defeat. Under what grounds would Trump cast these two senators as illegitimate? And what could he what could he do here, essentially? It's unclear what grounds he would claim. He and his allies have been searching for some evidence that the election in Georgia was fraudulent, really, since the day the votes were cast. And they keep failing to come up with anything.

That's why we heard Trump pressuring state election officials in, in, I believe at the very beginning of 2021 about this before the election was certified. We've seen multiple investigations. We've seen lawsuits. We now have the FBI pouring over records and trying to relitigate this election. But again, Trump has not produced any evidence. And he didn't in his speech. I think, you know, even if Trump were to claim that these senators are illegitimate,

it's not a power of the president to cast out a senator or to say they're illegitimate. I mean, it would be a piece of. political rhetoric, but it wouldn't have any power behind it. But I think it would, it would be designed partly to rev up his voters and partly, again, to make people believe the elections might not be fair and might not be free. We've also heard now U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Mark Wayne Mullins suggests that state officials who refuse to cooperate with the administration could potentially face jail time. If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections, and they chose not to, then those individuals can also be held

accountable by fines, by penalties, and even depending on how far it goes, prison time. The federal government does it administer American elections? Much of Trump's agenda has floundered, I think, because of this, because states and local officials have resisted federal demands. How significant was what Mullins was saying last week to you? I think it is dangerous, but I'm not sure what sort of legal weight it carries. I think you're exactly right. I mean, part of the problem here for Trump is he doesn't have a lot of statutory power. Congress can pass laws that affect elections, and they have mostly declined to do so in this case. And so that leaves the power to the states. They are threatening states with consequences if non-citizens vote. But that's a problem that doesn't exist. So it's a threat to go to jail if you break a law for something that is. isn't happening. So I think it's very attenuated. But they do want state officials, I think, to be in fear and to be sort of supplicants. And what we're seeing is even Republican officials are really pushing back on this. And I think are pretty upset about those threats.

In some cases, because they say, you know, we have been working hard to look for cases of non-citizen voting. We have been rooting this out. We've been auditing our roles. We've been doing all the things that you guys said we should. And here you're threatening us with jail time. And so you're getting some backlash from that side of the aisle, too. Hi, Steve Patterson here, host of the debaters, and while I love a funny fight, there's one thing that's not up for debate. The Stratford Festival is world-class theater right here in Canada. Whether you're a fan of Shakespeare, musicals, or classics like Death of a Salesman or Waiting for Godot, there's no better time to experience Canadian talent and no better place to see it than the Stratford Festival.

So get your tickets now at Stratfordfestable.ca and experience world-class performance the whole family can enjoy. You know, we even take the debaters there once, so I guess we're world class now. Power and politics is in Prince Edward Island this week, where the country's premiers are meeting with each other and then sitting down with the prime minister. Mark Carney wants to keep the focus on the economy, but the premiers are pushing new demands for more health care spending. Tune in to the PMP pod this week as we interview the premiers one-on-one. We'll ask them about their top priorities and biggest concerns for the year ahead. Listen to and follow power and politics wherever you get your podcasts. Tell me more about the Republican Party.

I hear people like Thomas Massey, outgoing Republican congressman who's now become a real kind of thorn in the side of Trump, repeatedly ask why the president continues to make the case that American elections are secure, given that he currently and previously had control over the House, Senate, White House, and has a conservative Supreme Court. So I asked my Republican colleagues, why are you complaining about election fraud? We won all the damn elections. The fraud that's going on is we're not holding ourselves to the promises that we made of fiscal responsibility, putting America first, making America healthy. The problem is we're wasting the opportunity.

To what extent are there people inside the Republican tent that want this big lie stuff to stop? I think there are a number of them. And Massey makes the point particularly publicly. and frequently. But you see a range of opinions from Republican members of Congress. One is, you know, even if I'm worried about election fraud or an election integrity, this is not what voters want to hear from. They want to hear about the economy and we are, we are not hitting the right thing. It's bad for us electorally. So that's one bunch. I also think there are members who look at the kind of, you know, the material in the Save America Act and they think this would be a bad

idea for a lot of reasons. It would create, it might make it basically impossible for election officials to really conduct an effective election in November because these would be huge changes in very short time. It might disqualify a lot of Republican voters. And they're hearing, I think, a lot of negative feedback from Republican election officials at home who don't want to deal with this right now and don't think it's a good idea or necessary. And so you see people like Senator Tom Tillis or Senator Lisa Murkowski, both of whom have said they will take action to block the bill, which is almost enough to ensure that it doesn't go forward. And I think you have other Republicans who are reluctant. And that's one reason the Senate has not done anything, despite a lot of pressure from Trump over a course of months now.

I mean, can you just tell me a little bit more about why it might block some Republicans for voting? Like there's just some of the specific issues that Republicans and then also Democrats see with it. Yeah. So again, the big headline here is that it would try to make people provide proof of citizenship. And the question is what they might provide. If you look at the Americans who have a passport, it's a little bit hard to tell. These numbers aren't totally clear. But it appears to be more common in Democratic-leaning states.

it's more educated voters, it's more coastal voters. These are the people who lean Democratic. Okay, what other documents might you have? Well, a birth certificate, but not everybody has access to a birth certificate. If, for example, you're a woman who is married and changed her name, your birth certificate may not have that. So suddenly you're on a kind of bureaucratic paper chase trying to find the right documents to show that you're a citizen. So it seems like it would disqualify a lot of people from voting, at least in the short term, who everyone agrees are American citizens and legitimate voters. and many of those people might be Republicans.

Even if there's not a clear partisan impact, this is a huge thing for election officials who always say that their offices are underfunded and they're kind of running on a shoestring to try to manage in this tiny amount of time before the November elections when they're trying to do all of the other things you have to do to make an election work.

Why do you think it is that he wants this bill so badly, given what you just said? I mean, I think sometimes with Trump it's more about emotion than it is about the sort of cold policy analysis. He believes or has been saying for a long time that non-citizens are voting. He wants to suppress what he sees as, you know, invalid votes or just Democratic votes in the election. And I think he hates looking like a loser. He hates that he has championed this law and Senate Republicans aren't going along with it. And so I think that's really grading on him.

No, if many of the administration's legislative and legal efforts have failed, as you have argued that they have, I just, what does remain? Like, what tools does the president still possess if he wants to shape the political environment ahead of an election? I think one is creating these kinds of doubts. This kind of rhetoric and high-profile speeches are meant to, you know, create uncertainty and make voters. wonder whether their vote will be counted, whether they should bother to vote. It sort of just creates an error of illegitimacy. The other big tool that people worry about is that Trump could deploy troops or federal law enforcement out on the streets around the elections, either to interfere with the voting places themselves or simply to create a nuisance or after the election to seize

voting machines, to seize ballot boxes in ways that would make it hard for people to trust the election results. And those are things that would have seen very far-fetched, I think, not even that long ago. But we know that Trump discussed some of them after the 2020 election. And many election officials and sort of election organizations have been planning for that kind of contingency in trying to be ready in case Trump does try to do that. How do you get ready for that? One thing is to make sure election officials understand the law, which is that armed federal agents are not permitted at polling places. It's to have local,

police and state officials all on the same page, make sure everybody knows their rights, make sure everybody knows what the law is, and make sure they're prepared to resist something. Now, you know, if you had huge deployments of federal troops, I think it would be hard for local officials to do anything about that. But it's also hard to hide a huge deployment of federal troops. So, you know, it's a little bit, you have to guess at what might happen and be prepared even as you don't expect and certainly as you hope that it doesn't happen. Listening to you talk about how people are getting ready for this, you know, I'm also struck by just despite how everything that we've discussed, many of these efforts have already been thwarted, right?

Courts have sufficiently intervened. State officials have resisted. And even Republican office holders have in some cases refused compliance. I just, have you been surprised at all by the resiliency? of those, the resilience of those institutions. Do you think that they've been resilient? I think they have been resilient. I think part of this is election officials are, I'm endlessly admiring of these people. They are, you know, they belong to both parties or they're nonpartisan, but they really take their work seriously. They want elections to work well. They don't do it for money and they don't do it for glory. And they've done it under really tough circumstances for several cycles now, you know, going back to COVID. And I think they take, they have done a really good job. They've been prepared.

They've been ahead of it. I think that the decentralization of the American election system, which has come into some criticism, including from people on the left for a long time, has proven to be a strength recently. And the last thing I'd say is Trump has a tendency not to plan or to do his work very carefully. And we saw that after the 2020 election when he was trying to hold on to power, but he simply was sloppy about it. And I think that has been the case now.

He's trying to do these things using powers he doesn't have and using, you know, sway with the Senate he doesn't have. And as a result, they're simply not working. Just before we go, David, I want to come back to these accusations that he's making specifically against China. You know, one of the central features of the president's rhetoric is that he attributes, you know, almost limitless agency to foreign powers. China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, despite kind of repeated investigations finding little or no evidence that they altered the outcome of 2020. Historically, you know, what political function do external enemies serve in narratives about democratic decline? And why do you think leaders and Trump so often locate the threat outside the country? I think in some ways it is easy to do.

you know, China is a known menace. It's, you know, in American politics, it's often invoked this way. And Trump has invoked it that way a lot. By the way, while not appearing to take any particularly strong actions against China for this alleged interference. And also when you don't have the evidence of votes being changed, you don't have the evidence coming out of places like Georgia, you kind of have to point elsewhere. I think these external actors, you know, they can be a really good way to. make an electorate and the public cohere. I think about the, you know, the sort of function that the Soviet Union served for American politicians of both parties for decades during the Cold War.

But it doesn't seem to be working quite as well for Trump. And I think that's partly because his claims are so far-fetched and partly because the American electorate is simply so polarized now that you don't get a lot of the rallying around the flag effect that other presidents have been able to achieve. Right. It's a good point. David, thank you so much for this. This is really interesting. Thank you. My pleasure. All right. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Pozzo. And thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca.com.