President Trump stood at the White House podium on Thursday and dropped what might be the most consequential number in modern election history: 278,000. That is how many non-citizens the Department of Homeland Security has identified on U.S. federal voter rolls, according to Trending Politics News. And if you think that number sounds bad, the president wants you to know it is probably much worse.
"According to the DHS review of state voter rolls and public records, they identified approximately 278,000 non-citizens who are registered to vote in federal elections," Trump said. He then pointed out that several Democrat-led states flat out refused to share their voter files, meaning the real total could be significantly higher. "Yet, even this limited analysis found more than a quarter of a million foreigners illegally registered to vote."
For a little context that should make your eyebrows shoot clean off your forehead: Joe Biden's combined margin of victory in Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona in 2020 was roughly 44,000 votes. So we are talking about a pool of allegedly ineligible registrations that dwarfs the margin in the states that decided the whole thing. Neat.
But Trump was not done. He also alleged that Chinese election meddling went far beyond your garden variety espionage. According to the president, the Chinese Communist Party stole voter data from 220 million Americans in what he called the largest data breach in history. He claimed the breach was "deliberately covered up by deep state actors in the previous administration" because, well, it was working in their favor.
"Intelligence shows China actively worked to aid the Biden campaign. They interfered through cyberattacks, data manipulation, and influence operations. This wasn't passive, it was a coordinated effort to swing the election against me and the American people," Trump stated.
Then came the real kicker. Trump alleged that China even attempted to manufacture fraudulent ballots for Joe Biden. "China's activities even included an attempt to manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden," he said. The president added that intelligence documenting these activities was deliberately kept out of his presidential briefings during his first term. Nothing says "transparent government" like hiding stuff from the actual president.
Trump announced the White House would begin releasing hundreds of declassified documents starting Thursday night, covering Chinese influence operations, alleged cover-ups by intelligence agencies and the Obama administration, and what he described as pay-for-play get out the vote operations that benefitted Democrats in 2020. The first batch of documents is already posted on WhiteHouse.gov.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, whose name continues to sound like a fictional cowboy, is scheduled to provide a formal briefing on the investigation on Friday.
Whether you find all of this vindicating or terrifying probably depends on which side of the aisle you sit on. Either way, a quarter million non-citizens on voter rolls is a number that demands some answers, and "we refuse to share our files" is not one of them.
Read more breaking news stories at: Trending Politics News
