Returning to a familiar theme, President Donald Trump claims that China interfered in the 2020 election that he lost to Joe Biden, and that some votes were cast illegally. In a prime-time address televised from the White House late last week, he said U.S. intelligence agencies had covered up alleged meddling by Chinese hackers. However, "nothing he revealed proved any outcomes were actually changed," New York Times chief White House reporter Peter Baker wrote in a news analysis, adding that Trump "cited selectively declassified documents to make sensational claims" with words such as "deep state," "rigged and stolen," "conspiring" and "corrupt." Many courts, ballot audits and his own first-term Justice Department found no evidence of fraud in the vote that made Biden, a Democrat, president for four years early this decade. There were "no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect" of the process, a declassified intelligence report said in March 2021.

Trump has made election security a major issue ahead of congressional contests in all states Nov. 3. If Republicans don't keep House and Senate majorities, that may not be an honest outcome, Trump implied last Thursday. In the 18 months since he returned to the office he held from 2017-21, the president has fired or neutralized key election officials, tried to make it harder to cast ballots, seized Georgia voting records from 2020, purged officials who investigated his efforts to overturn that year's loss, asserted federal control over mail-in voting ago and issued executive orders seeking state voter rolls.

Courts and Congress have blocked many of those efforts. The Constitution gives states authority to run elections, including for federal offices. Still, early this month the Justice Department told several state attorneys general that they could face criminal prosecution if they knowingly leave noncitizens on voter rolls or let noncitizens cast ballots in federal elections. "He's setting up Plan B -– do whatever you need to do to win," posts David Axelrod, a former senior White House adviser during Democrat Barack Obama's presidency.

While Trump referred seven times to the 2020 election in last week's remarks, he didn’t voice concerns about the 2016 or 2024 votes that he won. Looking toward November, Times reporter Baker wrote: "The idea that Mr. Trump might opt to take action if the election does not go the way he wants it to is not unthinkable." Early this year, the president told that newspaper he regrets not heeding advisers who urged him to order the National Guard to seize voting machines in swing states he lost in 2020.

President says: "Great damage has been done to our country. Our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen and the trust of the American people was lost. This cannot be allowed to continue." – July 16 address

Democrat says: "Ahead of this year’s midterms, Mr. Trump is setting the stage to undermine the confidence of the American people in our election." – Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn.

Commentator says: "What is happening is that effectively he’s setting up the pretext, the groundwork for massive interference in the vote this November." – Paul Krugman, former New York Times columnist