NBC News99%
NBC News correspondents examine Trump statements on election integrity 64%
7/17/2026, 12:35:04 PM
BS Summary: This video contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Appeal to Authority, and Hasty Generalization, with Availability Heuristic as the most egregious example at 35.4% saturation with 338 hits. Analysis detected 2,301 faulty-reasoning hits from 955 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 59.2% and a BS Rank of 64% (6,420 of 17,633 videos). This video is worse (more manipulative) than 63.60% of the video peer group.
President Trump saying that his White House, and we're seeing some of the documents now, declassifying information
he says is related to allegations of voter fraud and cover-ups. For example, accusing China of acquiring 220 million US voter files in what he calls the largest compromise of election data in history.
Keep in mind, voter files are publicly available materials. And while our reporting teams are still combing through the specifics of these documents, the core of what the president is referencing in these allegations are not new.
Let me bring in Kelly O'Donnell, Ryan Nobles, Dan Deuce, who've been watching. They are back with us now. And Dan, let me start with.
We now have a better understanding of the things that the president is alleging. Help us understand what is and is not new, what we already have been aware of, and what these documents, at least at the moment, are starting to show.
>> I didn't hear in that speech any evidence or him making the assertion that actual ballots were tampered with.
That China or another foreign actor actually altered our voting systems and changed the outcome of some election center in some state counting ballots.
Um, and it is also not new that our voting systems have been a target for our foreign adversaries for years. And US intelligence and law enforcement officials have been saying this now for some time. And then, as you said, the voting database, the voter database information, obviously one does not want your adversary scooping all that up necessarily, but most of that is commercially available. Uh, and I'll let Ryan and and Kelly talk to that further. The other thing, he mentioned Venezuela.
>> Yeah, talk about that.
>> Uh, and I'm not quite clear where he's going with that, cuz he said that there was evidence that Venezuela, the regime then, was manipulating its own you know, meddling in its own election, you know, tilting it somehow.
Uh, and there was an intelligence community report about the 2020 election here that concluded, let me read for this, "We have no information suggesting that the current or former Venezuelan regimes were involved in attempts to compromise US election infrastructure."
So, again, the the running theme throughout all these intelligence reports and FBI reports and DHS reports is that our US voting systems have not been disrupted or tampered with. And he I didn't hear any evidence from him that they had been. He said they're vulnerable and we need to make them secure.
>> And explain that the the issue of vulnerabilities, which you know, we know is something that exists, Kelly.
>> It's different than what
>> The major players on the world stage, China, Iran, Russia, are always trying to use their tools to get knowledge about the American system and to influence it. Trying to change voters' minds before they get into the ballot box more often than not.
What we're not hearing from the president is that they were in any way able to alter results or change the function of voting.
So, that's critically important. This database that Dan referenced, that when we say commercially available, that's the kind of consumer data that when different entities buy what you purchase in your Amazon history, well, you can also purchase voter registration. It's your name, your address, your precinct, that kind of information. It is not the kind of information. It is not the information about who you voted for or or what the results of of the ballots you cast.
I think the action points from the president, he's saying I want the FBI to investigate, I want prosecutions if there are some. Big question there. He's talking about 2020. The statute of limitations on many election-related matters is 5 years. We're at 6 years and counting.
So, that'll be a question as well. >> What about the Michigan allegations, Ryan?
>> Yeah, I and this alludes to what Kelly is talking about. This is from 6 years ago. He's talking about a very narrow, small investigation that was launched by the FBI during that time in the wake of the 2020 election, claims that there was an effort to manipulate the vote there. The FBI looked into it, decided there was nothing to it, and the investigation basically stopped. He's alleging that it was the Biden Justice Department that looked the other way because they didn't want the results of this.
Now, this is from Muskegon. This is not necessarily the most democratic area in the state of Michigan, but the idea that you would cherry-pick this one specific precinct, this one specific county in one specific state, and then allege that the entire country is the victim of vast voter fraud, I think is would you'd have to raise your eyebrows about that and say whether or not that's an indication of something greater. Now, do they find new evidence that they have uncovered as a result of this? Could they find people that are guilty of voter fraud?
That's not impossible, but would it change the results of the 2020 election? That's almost impossible. And And the other point I would make too, bouncing off of what Kelly said about the vulnerabilities, yes, there are the possibility that individual voting systems in individual places could be vulnerable, but we have 50 different states that run 50 different elections in every presidential cycle.
The idea that one foreign actor could get in and manipulate enough of those to overturn or change the results of the election without being caught is nearly impossible. That's part of the reason
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