Trump's bottom line: Pass the SAVE America Act

President Donald Trump on Thursday evening announced he would declassify intelligence revealing shortcomings in the American election integrity infrastructure and used the address to urge Congress to pass the SAVE America Act to fix them.

"For many years, I've called for bold, swift, and decisive action to protect the integrity of America's elections," he said. "Every American deserves to know that when they cast their vote, that vote will be counted accurately in a system, and that is to make that system secure-one where cheating and interference are not just difficult, but virtually impossible."

"Unfortunately, the system we have today falls catastrophically short of that standard. Tonight, I'm announcing the immediate declassification and release of critical intelligence, revealing shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure," he added.

Trump made the remarks during a primetime address to the nation at the White House.

He further detailed that a dedicated White House task force had reviewed and verified a litany of documents revealing key weaknesses in election integrity infrastructure.

Trump then said that the documents addressed five primary findings, first among them that China had illicitly acquired 220 million U.S. voter files and that members of the U.S. Intelligence Community had withheld that information from him.

"This data loss presents an unprecedented election security nightmare. The intelligence even shows that China signed a data exploitation unit specifically to this new project," Trump said.

The president went on to assert that China had actively sought to undermine him during his first term, in part by paying journalists to report negatively on his administration.

The second set of documents outlined efforts by Intelligence Community to withhold knowledge of Chinese interference and electoral weakness from him during his first term.

Another set of documents revealed that the Intelligence Community had assessed that foreign adversaries had the ability to compromise American election infrastructure.

"As one assessment states, we judge that the United States adversaries, including at a minimum Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, as well as non-state groups, have the capability to compromise U.S. election infrastructure," Trump declared.

A fourth set of documents detailed an investigation into a Democratic-aligned get-out-to-vote organization that was raided by law enforcement. That set reportedly includes testimony from affiliated personnel who claimed they signed voter registration forms in other people's names.

The fifth set addresses the findings of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) investigation into non-citizens on voter rolls, which he said found roughly 278,000 non-citizens on voter rolls. That investigation, he said, did not include many blue states, which refused to provide their voter rolls.

For Trump, the bottom line was a plea to senators to approve the SAVE America Act, a marquis voter ID bill that has languished in the upper chamber.

Ben Whedon is the Chief Political Correspondent for Just the News. Follow him on X.