Wizard in the Park

‘Zero new facts’: Teased as a bombshell, Trump election speech underwhelms election officials

The president’s speech was a mix of information that has long been public and claims that went further than the evidence supports.

VotebeatVotebeat Staff

When the President of the United States uses a primetime speech on a topic it’s important to dig into all the details. Votebeat does a good job of that with Trump’s July 16th primetime speech on elections.

One thing to keep in mind when you hear big numbers, or any numbers really, used as evidence for anything—the devil is in the details:

According to Trump, China also illicitly acquired the data of 220 million U.S. voters. However, voter data is widely publicly available, and it wasn’t clear from Trump’s speech whether he was alleging that voter registration databases were breached.

The thing about public information is, anyone can take it.

The article goes on to list more numbers given by the President, and reports the somewhat confused responses of the secretaries of state who were at dinner in South Dakota during the President’s speech. Judging by the responses there was more devil, than details. Dig into the article and decide for yourself.

The entire article is filled with interesting information, but the thing that struck me the hardest was that rank-and-file Republicans don’t seem that enthralled by Trump’s return to attacking elections. This quote says it all:

“The kids playing wizard in the park have a firmer grip on reality than any of this,” one Republican staff member said as he entered Mount Rushmore.