Trump goes to town on the deep state

Trump delivered his much-anticipated speech on election interference tonight. It was mercifully shorter than the usual. ^[i]

It began with the usual boasting about how “hot” the U.S. is. I don’t think he was referring to heat waves or wildfires. He claimed that the U.S. was “winning big” In Iran and that the fruits of that victory will ‘soon’ be revealed. He reminded his audience that his Trump child tax-free accounts will make many kids rich. The late, great John Gaddis, author of the magisterial and deeply funny novel, JR, all about a kid capitalist who makes it big, would enjoy the irony of this.

But the opener was just Trump throat clearing. The rest was the red meat.

He had three targets.

One was the People’s Republic of China, for what he claimed was massive foreign interference including compromises of US citizens’ personal data. But he stopped short of actually claiming that China had affected U.S. election outcomes.

The second target, and biggest by far, was the “deep state,” that shadowy cabal of anti-Trump officials in the U.S. intelligence community. Trump claimed that the deep state conspired to withhold crucial evidence of PRC election interference and covered up knowledge about the vulnerability of US election security. Trump promised to go after these “corrupt” officials (if any are left after all the purges conducted by his minions since he came into office).

The third target was the US “fake media.” Especially those TV channels that refused to broadcast his speech. Take away their licences, he thundered.

Trump promised to reveal all in a data dump of declassified records from the US intelligence community. Trump will try to cherry-pick and distort the findings of these documents as much as he can. But there will be plenty of fact-checking at work by trust-worthy sources.

You can find the White House records release here:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/election-integrity/

There are four tranches:

1. Records on Vulnerabilities in Electronic Voting and Ballot Counting Systems

2. China’s acquisition and exploitation of American voter data

3. Michigan voter-registration investigation

4. Noncitizens on State Voter rolls

CNN has already done a quick review and has come away with the conclusion that “a decent chunk of the documents rehash information that has already been public and widely understood in the U.S. intelligence community.” ^[ii]

Sounds like Zombie claims.

This was a speech of a desperate and floundering man, trying to float conspiracy theories and undermine confidence in the US electoral system in advance of the mid-terms in November.

As a prelude to what?

^[i]

^[ii] CNN, “What Trump’s newly declassified documents so—and don’t—say about threats to US elections,” July 16, 2026, https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/16/politics/what-trumps-newly-declassified-documents-do-and-dont-tell-us-about-threats-to-us-elections