A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
President Trump gave a primetime speech about elections that did not provide any new evidence that fraudulent votes have been cast. Trump has sown doubts about election security for years, including insisting that he won in 2020, which he did not.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Last night, he talked about foreign governments trying to sway election results and how voting machines can be hacked - both things that have been known for years. He declassified intelligence reports he said supported his claims of, quote, "shocking vulnerabilities" in elections.
MARTÍNEZ: In just a few minutes, we'll hear from Congressman Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, about what he sees in those documents. We start with Trump's political motivations for giving a speech about election security.
FADEL: Here to walk us through those politics is NPR senior political correspondent Tamara Keith. Hi, Tam.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Good morning.
FADEL: Good morning. Why is the president renewing his claims that U.S. elections are not secure or that the system lacks integrity?
KEITH: President Trump has questioned the fairness of every election going back at least to 2016, an election he won. Now we're in another election year. The courts have blocked his executive actions to change election administration, and he has tried every lever he can to push Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would, among other things, require proof of citizenship to vote. He even recently refused to sign a big, popular bipartisan bill addressing the cost of housing in, quote, "protest" about the SAVE America Act. That didn't move the needle. So last night, he commanded the national airwaves in a way that only a president can to once again push for it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: 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.
FADEL: OK. That's the president making that claim, doing a call to action. How likely is that to affect the SAVE America Act's chances of passage?
KEITH: It doesn't have the vote it needs to pass in the Senate. Yes, Republicans control that chamber, but it can't get past a filibuster without Democratic votes. And even if Republicans tried procedural moves to get around the filibuster, it doesn't look like there's enough Republican support to pass this either. And here's the thing. This is an election year, and there are a lot of Republicans on the ballot who would much rather focus on the issue voters repeatedly say is most important to them, the cost of living.
FADEL: Did the president speak to those affordability concerns?
KEITH: Very briefly. He went through our greatest hits reel of the first 18 months back in office - no tax on tips, a blockbuster stock market. There was a brief mention of a recent inflation report that showed some improvement. He said very little about the war with Iran, which has driven up prices. And if you just step back here, it's remarkable. If you told me the president was going to give an address to the nation from the White House this week, a week where the Iran ceasefire broke down and he has ordered nightly bombing raids on Iranian targets, the assumption would be that he needed to address this escalation, but that is not what he did.
FADEL: Wow. Should we expect Trump to keep talking about this - elections?
KEITH: Yes. I mean, he's still talking about 2020. The phrase he used in that clip we played, unless you want to cheat, is the president of the United States laying the groundwork to say that the elections this fall, where Republicans are widely expected to take losses, won't be fair. He talked a lot about vulnerabilities in the system but didn't offer any proof that they'd been exploited. But it doesn't take finding a smoking gun to sow doubts and potentially depress voter turnout, and that might be self-defeating. Trump needs voters who often sit out midterms but show up for him to vote in big numbers for Republican members of Congress not named Trump.
FADEL: NPR's Tamara Keith. Thank you so much for that reporting.
KEITH: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
