Donald Trump's alarming week with election rigging fears and armchair football punditry

Donald Trump's alarming week with election rigging fears and armchair football punditry In case you've been tied up with events closer to home, here's a quick catch up of the news from Trumpworld this week - and why it could be pretty momentous Donald Trump spent most of this week limbering up for his plan to undermine or deny the result of November's midterm elections. But that doesn't mean he didn't have time to watch the football. His prime-time speech on Thursday night may have been overshadowed on this side of the pond by Andy Burnham succeeding Keir Starmer to the Labour leadership, and Nigel Farage learning how many independent candidates he'll be up against in the Clacton by-election. So in case you missed it, here's a quick catch up of the news from Trumpworld this week - and why it could be pretty momentous. Trump weighed in on England's World Cup Defeat Because of course he did. Last night Trump held a little ceremony ahead of the World Cup Final, mainly so he and FIFA chief Gianni Infantino could congratulate each other on their manly greatness. But during his speech, Trump confirmed reports that he'd been golfing with Harry Kane, and had a go at armchair punditry. "You have a great player in England, who I played golf with - Harry (Kane)," he said. "I think they perhaps made a mistake when they made him (Kane) a defensive player. They took the lead, they took their best player and put him on defence. We gotta be a little bit offensive, right? What do I know about coaching? But that was a little unusual. Harry is a great guy!" Thanks Donald, now back to the studio. His sinister 'election rigging' speech is ringing alarm bells Donald Trump was accused of seeking to sow doubt November's midterm elections on Thursday with a rambling live TV address. The US President scrambled to convince Americans he'd found evidence election meddling, prompting fresh fears that he will seek to deny the result of November's midterm elections, which Republicans are expected to lose badly. In a rare prime time address, Trump claimed declassified CIA documents proved China had interfered with the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden. They do not. No credible intelligence has emerged showing that the vote count in 2020 was manipulated by foreign actors. Repeated audits and reviews - many run by Republicans, including Trump’s own then-attorney general - have found no significant fraud occurred in 2020. Even if substantiated, Trump’s claims did not amount to conduct that would have altered the outcome of any race, let alone the 2020 race for the White House. He also did not raise doubts about his election wins in 2016 or 2024. But despite the vague and unsubstantiated nature of Trump's claims, many fear he will use them as a pretext to overturn, ignore or delegitimise the result in November. Seeking to head off anyone noting that he was in power in 2020, and appointed the people who led the intelligence agencies that gave the 2020 vote a clean bill of health, Trump ranted about members of the "deep state." And his lieutenants didn't waste any time in trying to rig the midterms Markwayne Mullin, Trump's erratic new Homeland Security Secretary threatened to throw state election officials in prison if they didn't comply with Trump's brazen bid to rig the midterms - or at least cast them into doubt. On Friday, the morning after Trump's prime time TV address, he said his department would aggressively chase voter fraud cases. Which shouldn't take long, because there have been only a handful of verified cases of voter fraud in the last decade. But he also claimed, without providing evidence, that there are more than 250,000 non-citizens registered to vote in California, New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania. The Trump regime has been seeking to seize voter rolls, which are held and managed by states, so they can "scrub" alleged non-citizens from them. Mullin neither explained how he came into possession of those states' voter rolls, how he established the citizenship status of the people on them, or said whether any of the alleged registered non-citizens had ever tried to vote in US elections. In reality, there have were 77 confirmed instances of non-citizen voting between 1999 and 2023. All of them were prosecuted. The system works. But if state officials refuse to hand over sensitive voter data to his department - which, to be clear, absolutely cannot be trusted with it - they face fines, penalties or prison time. People are worried about where this is going Sue Gordon, principal deputy director of national intelligence in Trump’s first term, called the president’s address “a dangerous speech about an incredibly important topic.” She said the intelligence community throughout Trump’s first term was alarmed about foreign interference in elections, but Trump scoffed at them, angered at the investigation of his campaign’s relationship with Russia. “He had an entire term to deal with it and I don’t know how you can believe how the same community that told him about it, that was excoriated about it” wouldn’t warn him in 2020, Gordon said on CNN. Conservative commentator John Solomon, who joined the White House staff last month and was seated in the East Room for Trump’s speech, later told MS NOW “the intelligence community has zero evidence that someone has flipped — that a foreign power flipped — a vote in 2020, ’22 or ’24.” But, he added, “We’re not through all the documents.” Trump used the remarks to justify his push to pass the SAVE America Act - itself a bid to rig elections in the Republicans' favour. It would demand strict photo ID to register to vote, seize control of voter rolls on an unprecedented scale, and dramatically clamp down on postal voting - which Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed is vulnerable to fraud. It will never pass through Congress. Trump hasn't got the votes and Congress won't give up the filibuster to force it through.