U.S. President Donald Trump speaks about election security during an address to the nation from the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 16, 2026. SAUL LOEB/Pool via REUTERS
President Donald Trump delivered an inaccurate speech on Thursday night in which he falsely claimed that China stole the 2020 presidential election from him and ordered the Department of Homeland Security to get voter files from every state.
In response to this address, a former principal deputy Director of National Intelligence who worked for the president until 2019 — meaning she served under Trump — told CNN's Kaitlin Collins how the speech, in which they "didn't hear anything shocking," was deeply flawed and dangerous.
"I think this was a dangerous speech about an incredibly important topic, with some really questionable remedies in mind," Gordon explained. "So let me go through that.Number one: since 2016, the intelligence community has been saying that foreign actors intended to influence our election for the purpose of undermining democracy — not undermining a president, undermining democracy. If you recall, the whole 2016-to-2021 first Trump term turned on us trying to say that, and him interpreting it as us spreading misinformation when we tried to share that information. So this is not new — that foreign actors try to influence our election. They do. And with the advent of the digital era, there are lots of tools available to them. So this is not a new threat. It is one he certainly knew of. He had an entire term to deal with it."
Yet Gordon pointed out that Trump furnished no evidence that his intelligence community withheld information from him, and that indeed the very concept of them doing so is "hard to believe," especially since she was there working for Trump during a large part of the period covered.
"I think that's hard to believe," Gordon said. "But the other thing I want to say is I think he treats intelligence as though it's a verdict, and it's not — it is the beginning of a process. It is the way you start to ask questions. So even if there is new data that's going to be released, that doesn't prove anything. Intent is not activity. Activity is not impact. And impact is not outcome. So to try to make that leap — even if there is new intelligence data worthy of being assessed, because most of what he will release has already been assessed — you have to go through a process of asking ever-tougher questions before you ever get to the notion of whether intent and attempts become outcome."
She added, "And I'll remind you: for 2016, 2020, and 2024, we as a collective assessed that they did not have impact on the outcome. So to now jump from intelligence to that impact — I think that's dangerous, because in a way, Caitlin, it does the work of our adversaries for us. They don't have to interfere. They just have to convince us not to trust our democracy."
Gordon was not alone among non-partisans — or at least non-Democratic partisans — to condemn Trump's speech.
"This affordability speech will turn it around for the Republicans," Rick Wilson, the Republican co-founder of the anti-Trump GOP group The Lincoln Project, posted on X when describing how Trump focused on his old grievances rather than issues Americans care about. Another conservative commentator, Jim Hanson, quipped that "when this guy's cakehole is openCake is going in and BS is spewing out." Finally Sarah Longwell, the conservative website The Bulwark's polling expert, posted that "Trump is really terrified that Democrats might have some oversight after the 2026 election, so he preemptively working to delegitimize America’s elections. That’s all this speech was. Undermining American elections. Outrageous."
Writing for The Washington Post in February, conservative columnist George F. Will explained that Trump's claims of election fraud had been thoroughly litigated and debunked.
“Someone should read to him ‘Lost, Not Stolen,’ a 2022 report by eight conservatives (two former Republican senators, three former federal appellate judges, a former Republican solicitor general, and two Republican election law specialists),” Will argued. “They examined all 187 counts in the 64 court challenges filed in multiple states by Trump and his supporters. Twenty cases were dismissed before hearings on their merits, 14 were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before hearings. Of the 30 that reached hearings on the merits, Trump’s side prevailed in only one, Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the state’s result.”
Will added, “Trump’s batting average? .016. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump’s advocates confirmed Trump’s loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes.”
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