Trump’s Thursday primetime elections speech was going to be more dangerous 

President Donald Trump’s Thursday primetime elections speech turned out to be neither the bombshell nor fiasco that it was hyped up to be. Trump did make some nutty claims, but new behind-the-scenes reporting from Politico shows that it definitely was on course beforehand to be a lot nuttier. 

One of the more scandalous claims Trump made Thursday night was that federal intelligence agencies conspired in 2020 to keep certain information from him regarding election interference.

However, according to Politico, prior to Thursday evening, acting national intelligence director Bill Pulte wanted Trump to name names – that is, call out the specific intelligence agents involved in the alleged cover-up. 

And while Trump declassified a batch of intelligence files thought to support his election fraud and conspiracy claims, the documents were heavily redacted. Pulte wanted less redactions, reports Politico.

The public was spared of Pulte’s suggestions, though, when White House officials convinced Trump that this kind of additional exposure would have risked intelligence agents’ lives and also may have led to the public taking his speech less seriously.  

Without those interventions, “there was going to be a lot of crazier shit said,” a White House official told Politico.

As for what was said in Trump’s speech: Trump claimed that China intercepted tens of millions of U.S. voter data records. But, these files are already publicly available online, in some states for free. No actual subterfuge by China has ever been verified, even within Trump’s own declassified files. 

He also claimed that nearly 278,000 non-citizens were found on voter registration lists. This stat originated with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Sec. Markwayne Mullin, who’s repeated it while threatening to block funding and prosecute state election officials who don’t comply with Trump’s voter data grab demands.

Meanwhile, neither Mullin nor Trump have cited a source or methodology for how they came up with those numbers. 

Some 2,500 of those alleged non-citizens were found in Georgia. However, state officials there said that the people DHS flagged were never granted voting status.

Speaking of Georgia, some of the other rumors circulating before Trump’s Thursday night speech were that he was going to cite spurious claims of voter fraud to either try to cancel the state’s 2020 election results or claim that its Democratic senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff were illegitimately elected that year — or all of the above. 

As for what Politico reported didn’t make it into the final speech, Pulte was reportedly “really scared” that what he was pushing Trump to say might actually get people hurt or killed. 

Pulte has otherwise been an eager accomplice in Trump’s agenda to undermine voters’ confidence in election security.

Since named acting intel chief in June, replacing Tulsi Gabbard, Pulte was ordered by Trump to investigate and declassify documents related to alleged “rigged elections” in 2020. In late June, he picked for his chief of staff Christina Norton, who was instrumental in planning out the GOP’s controversial poll watcher operation in 2024. 

Despite his willingness to do Trump’s bidding, bipartisan criticism of Pulte’s absence of  experience in this field led the president to nominate federal prosecutor Jay Clayton for his official director of national intelligence.