Trump: China Stole 220 Million U.S. Voter Files | China in Focus

Welcome to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. Our top story, massive data breaches, media manipulation, and a fight over voter ID. President Trump is accusing China of targeting 220 million Americans in an effort to influence the election. This data loss presents an unprecedented election security nightmare. Beijing's efforts to influence American elections, declassified documents reveal more details about broader influence campaigns targeting U.S. public opinion and social divisions. New visa rules are taking effect in the U.S. with Chinese students and journalists facing even tighter restrictions. We highlight why China is at the center of the debate. A bombshell allegation from the White House and a nationwide address Thursday night. President Trump accused Beijing of pulling off the largest election data theft in history. The White House provided declassified intelligence documents to back it up. The People's Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China's illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files. The alleged breach affected 220 million voter files, a number approaching the total U.S. registered voter population in the 2024 election. That means nearly the entire country's data was taken, including names, addresses, political party preferences, and other sensitive data. Intelligence officials say Beijing set up a special agency to analyze this data. Experts say access to information on that scale could help foreign agents commit voter fraud, track key political figures, or launch highly targeted disinformation campaigns to sway swing voters. The Chinese government wanted U.S. president to lose the next election. And the reason they wanted me to lose is because they knew I was wise to them, charge them billions and billions of dollars worth of tariffs, and built the strongest military anywhere in the world. These are exact quotes from the CIA reporting. President Trump also claimed Beijing is waging a cognitive war at home using the American mainstream media against him. The Chinese government sought to identify U.S. journalists who had reported negatively on the U.S. president and pay them large sums of money to write more negative articles about him, as many as they could, and they didn't care what they said. American voters have noticed the bias. YouGov released a poll revealing 43 percent of Americans believe the media wants Trump to fail, and only 16 percent say the media wants him to succeed. A Harvard-Harris poll published Tuesday reveals a wide gap between negative media coverage and voters' views of Trump's policies. Of the 13 key Trump policies measured, 11 have majority support. President Trump is pushing Congress to pass the Save America Act, a proposal that would mandate stricter voter ID requirements nationwide. To recap, President Trump's address laid out four major allegations. He accused China of stealing 220 million American voter files. Trump also alleged Beijing worked to undermine his campaign since 2018 and paid off American journalists for negative coverage. And he accused U.S. intelligence agencies and mainstream media outlets of helping to cover up those threats for years. China's foreign ministry strongly denied the allegations Friday, calling the claims completely groundless and a malicious smear. And more on Beijing's efforts to influence American elections. Newly declassified documents detail what officials say was a broader influence campaign targeting American data, public opinion and social divisions. NTD's Dana Monaghan has more on that, plus reactions from CIA Director John Ratcliffe. The newly declassified files describe Chinese efforts to use cyber operations, online influence campaigns and other tactics to advance Beijing's interests. A National Intelligence Council assessment says Beijing sought to project themes across social media platforms, including TikTok, Facebook, X and YouTube, while exploiting major fault lines inside American society. The assessment says Beijing believed racial conflict could be a significant factor in the election environment and that Chinese-linked actors sought to amplify divisions, promote unrest and encourage anti-government sentiment inside the United States. President Trump says intelligence agencies knew about China's activities but failed to fully disclose the threat. US spy agencies began learning about the compromise of voter registration files in 2020 when they discovered that tens of millions of voter data, think of that tens of millions of voters data in 18 states have been bought, stolen or hacked by China. Yet those responsible for sounding the alarm instead kept the information secret and hidden. President Trump calling for investigations into how the information was handled. I'm asking the office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Justice, the FBI and the CIA to investigate how and why such crucial information was hidden, to fire those involved in the cover-up and to file criminal charges, if appropriate, against these people. CIA Director John Ratcliffe defending the release, saying foreign influence in election security remain critical national security issues. Ratcliffe saying, I have long publicly highlighted China's nefarious efforts to influence the 2020 election against President Trump, as evidenced by my dissent to the flawed January 2021 intelligence community assessment. Ratcliffe saying the newly released documents provide further insight into Beijing's intentions. The CIA director says the matters deserve public scrutiny to protect the foundation of American democracy, secure elections and public trust in the electoral process. Daniel Monaghan, NTD News. To discuss the new revelations on the Chinese Communist Party and its efforts to compromise U.S. elections, NTD's Kerry Dunst spoke with retired U.S. Marine Colonel Grant Newsham. He's a former U.S. diplomat and a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy. Take a look. Well, we have to really go through the materials now and see what is actually in them. I think what the president described is something that isn't a surprise to most people who follow the matter closely and know how China operates and what their objectives are. It's very much in line with Chinese behavior to go after our electoral system. And there's absolutely nothing strange about that. The first Trump administration was, in fact, the first administration to really cause the Chinese some problems. They hated them for their good China policy, at least good from the U.S. perspective, and they wanted them off the playing field. What the president said, they said it really wasn't much of a surprise. Now it remains to be seen what exactly is in the documents. And we've always had some attempted interference by Russia and other actors. So what makes this particular drop of evidence unique with the Chinese regime's meddling? Well, when it comes to the Chinese, what they have is scale. Now, there's been other countries that would like to manipulate our elections and some, many of them, a few at least, that have tried. But the Chinese are able to do it on really a multi-front strategy. And that includes things like, as the president said, trying to influence journalists to write articles favorable against Trump, get co-op business. They've been very successful at that, actually, to do China's bidding. And then there is the direct assault on the electoral system, down to how people are trying to mobilize voting blocs, and potentially even the cyber hacking of the hardware. That's all within China's playbook. Also, the basic divisions which they're trying to create in the United States are something that all works to their advantage, from their perspective. So what you have is, say, this multi-front approach, multi-front assault. It's not just going after, say, one thing, say, voter rolls, say, electoral hardware, tabulators, counting machines, voting machines, et cetera, et cetera. But it includes all of these. It's somewhat like, say, a burglar who's checking every door in the house to see if there's one that he can get in. And he'll take his advantages where he finds them. Yeah, the president was very narrow in his descriptions yesterday, keeping it really related to election meddling. But what you're describing is the election meddling is one part of a broader effort. Could you expound on that? Well, it's called political warfare, unrestricted warfare, war without rules. The Chinese uses a number of terms for it. You're trying to get the United States to do what you want it to do or not do what you want it to do. And ultimately, the objective is to weaken America so that China will ultimately dominate and control the United States. And that's their overall strategy. They've been very clear about it. And one approach to that is, one of the words they use is public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, lawfare. So they attack us on a number of fronts, chemical assaults, drug assaults, drug warfare, as they call it, the fentanyl that's killed over 800,000 Americans, getting proxies, American elites, to actually do China's bidding. And these are all from, as the Chinese see it, a discreet but part of a much broader assault. And the electoral process is one part of it. And that is one that they obviously have an interest in, and they've obviously been in that, been working in that area. They've done it in other countries as well. I would cite Canada and Australia and the United Kingdom, just as a few examples. So there's nothing, say, surprising about this. But it is part of a broader political warfare subversion campaign by the Chinese Communist Party directed against its main enemy, as they call it, the United States. New visa limits target Chinese journalists in America. The U.S. is tightening visa rules for foreign students, exchange visitors and journalists, with Chinese media workers facing shorter stays. The administration says the changes are meant to give officials more oversight of foreign visitors and prevent abuse of the visa system. The rules limit student and cultural exchange visas to four years. The Trump administration says some visitors have remained in the U.S. for decades beyond their original programs. Those who want to stay longer would need to apply for an extension or leave and reenter the country. The changes come amid broader security concerns. In recent cases, Chinese national students were charged with smuggling biological materials into the U.S. that officials said could threaten American agriculture. The new rules also limit journalists' visas to 240 days, with Chinese nationals facing a shorter 90-day limit. The restrictions follow years of U.S. concerns over between Chinese state-backed media operations in the country and Beijing's intelligence activities. China is criticizing the move, calling it discriminatory and saying it could disrupt the work of Chinese media in the U.S. The changes add to ongoing tensions between Washington and Beijing over media access, foreign influence and national security. Coming up, Taiwan is boosting its drone capabilities as it prepares for a potential Chinese invasion. The island's president is urging parliament to pass a new funding bill. In China's dominance of the supply chain and the war in the Middle East, the U.S. is at risk of running out of aluminum soon, which could significantly drive up car prices. What's the solution? There are a lot of companies, especially startups, that have very novel ideas that are very, very helpful to solving the problem. More on that after the break here on China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer, boosting its drone capabilities and preparing for a potential Chinese invasion. On Friday, Taiwan's president Lai Ching-de said the island must do more to strengthen its own defense amid growing calls for increased military spending. He urged lawmakers to approve new funding for drones. Taiwan's government has made drones and other unconventional weapons a top priority. But in May, the opposition-controlled parliament approved only part of the most of which was set aside for U.S. weapons purchases. Now, the government is asking parliament to approve a new package aimed at expanding its drone program. Lai said the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have shown drones are, quote, the most important assets on the battlefield. During both his first and second terms, President Trump has called on U.S. allies to increase their defense spending. From drones to fighter jets, aluminum is vital to U.S. industries. But as China dominates key mineral supply chains and global disruptions cut aluminum supplies, experts say America faces growing economic and security risks. We spoke with Joe Gebbia Sr., founder and CEO of State Shield, to discuss. Joe Gebbia, thank you so much for joining us. Great to have you back on the show. Thank you for the invitation, Tiffany. Now, aluminum is very critical. It's used in everything from transportation, packaging, construction to defense like our Air Force missiles, satellites and beyond. Now, the U.S. relies quite heavily on importing aluminum from places like Canada as domestic smelters produce about 16 percent of the needed supply, at least currently. That's according to an analysis by the Washington Examiner. With current geopolitical disruptions, that's also impacting supply. Why is aluminum, though, in short supply in the U.S.? You know, this is an extremely timely subject that you're bringing up, and it really needs to be discussed and brought to not only the American public's attention, but also to the politicians. What happened, unfortunately, back on March 28th in 2026, Iran destroyed the infrastructure development of aluminum plants in Abu Dhabi and in Bahrain. And those plants were providing about 3.3 million metric tons of aluminum in the A380, which is the base product, to America. Aluminum is one of the three major metals that are needed for infrastructure builds. You have aluminum, copper and steel. If the marketplace changes two or three percent, it causes a disruption. We're looking at between 35 and 40 percent disruptions, and we're potentially looking at having out of stocks, most notably in our manufacturing sectors, which is primarily car manufacturers, starting around September, which would be devastating if it got to that point. So it's a very, very critical conversation to be had. I want to dig into that because, of course, with the Iran conflict that is having global impacts, there's also competition from China, which is also driving up prices. And of course, there's been a lot of global concern of China's weaponization of the critical minerals sector and supply chain have been monopolizing that for years. There is, of course, a lot of movement from the U.S. and allies to try and start countering that. But what other critical minerals and metals are we dependent on from China right now? Well, it's pretty well known that China has been for decades trying to get itself into controlled situations, whether it be pharmaceuticals, drones or rare earth minerals and just regular minerals besides the rare earths. And they've done a very, very successful job at this. They've structured it so they buy their marketplaces through price and they can afford to do that because the CCP is being subsidized. They subsidize the manufacturing process over there. For example, with the drones in 2018, they lowered the price on drones by 50 percent. Today, they control 90 percent of the drone business in the United States they have. And it's considered a national threat. The NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act, has actually declared or prohibits federal agencies from buying Chinese drones. But we're in such a situation that all of the local people have purchased it and they can't afford they can't afford to get out because they don't get compensated back like the federal agencies do. That's just an example of what goes on in the critical minerals. And they've worked hard at building up not only their steel. We can remember situations where they've dumped steel into the United States many times. They have aluminum and copper. Now, the ones that are really critical right now are copper, helium and aluminum. Aluminum, we've just expressed, I just explained why that's so critical. On the copper side, the reason why copper now is in such demand is because it's being used extensively in new automobiles. You know about this from BMW and Tesla and Ferrari with their new series cars. They're all they have all wanted to move in the last few years to copper because copper is lighter and it's a very efficient transmitter. Now, copper has gone up fourfold. It's $15,000 a metric ton, which is it's the new gold and it's the supply cannot meet what manufacturing sector wants. So you're seeing a reversion back to back to aluminum and sometimes combinations up, but mostly aluminum. Sorry about that. I've got birds flying around me. So you're going to be seeing the move from copper back to aluminum. But as they were making this transition, then the secondary impact of the aluminum supply really exasperated. So there's probably going to be significant pricing increasing cars because they're using more aluminum and they're using more copper. And with the weaponization of the critical minerals and other metals in the supply chain shocks of that, Forbes actually had a piece out titled American defense should champion recycling to compete with China on the recycling part. I know you've actually been working with domestic suppliers here in the States in terms of aluminum. Talk to us about that. I'm where I'm operating. Obviously, I'm the CEO of State Shield and our job, our purpose is to educate legislators at the state level of what the dangers are that we're facing as a country. We've primarily focused on China heavily when it comes to every aspect of what they're trying to do to to to gain an advantage over the United States and at our expense. But when it comes to on just the aluminum category now, there is a company out there called Cartagen, and they are a standalone company in being able to take what has commonly been referred to as scrapped product. They refer to it as above ground metals. And it's run by an individual who was a professor at the Colorado School of Mining, a very, very brilliant doctor who has discovered a way to extract metals, especially our three critical metals for infrastructure, as I mentioned earlier, which is aluminum, which are aluminum, copper and steel from things such as crushed cars or or deteriorating airplanes on the salt plains of Arizona or or mothballed battleships sitting at Chesapeake Bay. They can take all of these products and they can convert them into readily usable base products of aluminum, copper and steel to replenish what our what our needs are, not only to replenish, but to provide what the growing demand is for these. And now that's been exasperated by what's gone on with the aluminum. So the company has refocused itself strictly on doing aluminum. Now, that's fascinating. So is that working with the federal government? Is it more of a state based solution or how is that working? Well, it will bring states in and it has to do with financial incentives. OK, so the problem what's going on in the United States right now is that we have a call for reshoring manufacturing and there are good things being done. But there are a lot of companies, especially startups that have very novel ideas that are very, very and very, very helpful to help to solving the problem where financing is not coming anywhere near the speed it needs to be. And this is true, too, in the pharmaceutical end of the sector. So what we did is the state shield is we have made a proposal to the federal government vis-a-vis executive orders. The first executive order is to classify companies that meet requirements as set forth in executive orders. And that's for T45 and T47, the first term of the president and the second term, and most significantly relate to national security. If a company is providing an answer to a problem that meets both those criterias, they should be able to sidestep the normal process that is had securing funds from the S from the SBA or the USDA or the DOW or whatever the agency is. They should be given a 100 percent financing and they should be allowed to turn their engines on full blast and accelerate the development of their of their of their answer to the problem. Well, incredible work, as always. Joe, Jibby, I thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. I enjoyed it. That's all for today's China In Focus. Tiffany Meyer, if you have any feedback on the show or have something you'd like to see us cover, send us an email at ChinaInFocus at NTD.com. We'd love to hear from you. For on the clock original news coverage, visit us at NTD.com or download our NTD app. Thanks for watching. See you soon.