AILSA CHANG, HOST:
President Trump gave a primetime address tonight where he spoke about the integrity of U.S. elections, a topic he has spread disinformation about for much of his political career. Here to fill us in on what the president said is NPR White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben. Hi, Danielle.
DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: Hey there.
CHANG: OK, so give us the broad outlines of the president's remarks tonight.
KURTZLEBEN: Well, he said he's declassifying and releasing documents regarding the security of U.S. elections, and he talked about those documents as covering any number of theories about how he says U.S. elections have been interfered with, including by foreign actors like China. Now, to be upfront, we're being careful how we talk about this because, like you said, Trump has spread disinformation and lies about elections for years.
For example, he's often said with no evidence that he won in 2020, when, in fact, Joe Biden did. Multiple reviews have found that that wasn't the case. And to be clear, he didn't actually attempt to lay out evidence for that tonight. He focused on alleged vulnerabilities in the system and some specific issues, such as fraud in one voter registration operation in Michigan. But as to his specific accusations, to coincide with the speech, the White House released several tranches of documents, some of them highly redacted. The timing of the release allowed him to announce all these claims without allowing journalists or scholars to assess their veracity in real time...
CHANG: Sure.
KURTZLEBEN: ...Which allowed all this to be disseminated with a lag in that critical analysis that we do. Now, my colleagues at NPR will be digging into all of those in the hours and days ahead.
CHANG: And I'm sure you're looking forward to that. OK, well, President Trump made some significant claims about vulnerabilities in past elections. How much do we know about his claims thus far?
KURTZLEBEN: Well, look; vulnerabilities or potential vulnerabilities do exist in the U.S. election system, as my NPR colleague Miles Parks has reported. But still, in the six years that Trump has said he won in 2020, which is, again, a lie, he has been unable to come up with evidence that that election was meaningfully affected by any of those vulnerabilities. So even if there are possible weaknesses, that doesn't mean those have been exploited.
CHANG: Exactly. OK, let's talk about the timing of these remarks tonight because he also gave the speech as he is pushing a bill about the security of elections. It's called the SAVE America Act. Can you just remind us briefly what is in that legislation?
KURTZLEBEN: Right. Well, among other things, it would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and then would require ID to vote. And that would mean really greater federal control over elections. Now, again, documented cases of voter fraud are extremely rare, and opponents of this bill do argue that some Americans just don't have ready access to some of those identifying documents. Now, Trump talks about all of this as being about voter fraud, but he has also talked about the SAVE America Act as benefiting Republicans. In a July 3 speech, here's what he said about the bill.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: If we terminate the filibuster, as we should do, and immediately vote for the SAVE America Act...
(CHEERING)
TRUMP: ...Then we will not lose an election for a hundred years.
KURTZLEBEN: So, again, he's explicitly argued the bill would benefit his party.
CHANG: And real quick, Danielle - what did he say about that bill tonight?
KURTZLEBEN: Well, he accused people who don't support it of wanting to cheat. But again, some members of his own party have opposed the bill, which is part of the reason it hasn't been able to pass the Senate. Now, tonight, he had an aggressive push for Congress to pass it, and he told Americans to call their Congress members to pass it.
CHANG: That is NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben. Thank you so much, Danielle.
KURTZLEBEN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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