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SCMP Reporters

US President Donald Trump delivered a prime-time “Speech to the Nation” on Thursday at 9pm Eastern Time, or 9am Hong Kong time on Friday.
Such addresses are typically reserved for major national moments. During his second term, Trump has used them to highlight key priorities, including a year-end address in December, and a speech in April focused on the Iran conflict.
While the White House did not release the full agenda ahead of the speech, its timing drew attention. It came soon after Trump announced the reinstatement of a US naval blockade on Iran and reversed course on his proposed 20 per cent fee on cargo passing through the Strait of Hormuz, declaring the US the “guardian” of the critical waterway.
With the Iran conflict escalating, public support for the war remaining low, and the 2026 midterms approaching, Trump was expected to address both foreign policy and domestic political issues, including his allegations about election vulnerabilities and voter fraud in 2020.
Ahead of the speech, briefed congressional allies described it as the most critical Oval Office address since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, with a warning that the time for complacency with China was officially over.
Despite repeatedly describing Chinese President Xi Jinping as his “friend” and his recent visit to Beijing, Trump was expected to reiterate earlier claims about Chinese interference in US elections.
Reporting by Khushboo Razdan, Dewey Sim and Orange Wang


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US President Donald Trump gestures after addressing the nation from the East Room of the White House in Washington on Thursday. Photo: AP

US President Donald Trump addresses the nation from the East Room of the White House in Washington on Thursday. Photo: AFP


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Trump’s speech focused on Chinese interference in domestic politics, called out local TV networks and mentioned Iran war once


Trump’s speech focused on Chinese interference in domestic politics, called out local TV networks and mentioned Iran war once.


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The temperature inside Washington just reached boiling point.
Right before the broadcast begins, US Senator Bernie Moreno, a Republican from Ohio, took to social media to share a preview after receiving a private briefing from the White House.
According to Moreno, the address is not a routine policy speech.
“I was just briefed by the White House on what to expect this evening. I would encourage every American to tune in tonight to the President’s speech. This may be the most important Oval Office address since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The time for complacency with China is over,” he said.


‘Time for complacency with China is over’

Just hours before his prime-time address, Trump posted a series of photos from his May visit to Beijing, showing him alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping during a military ceremony and official engagements.
The timing of the posts has fuelled speculation over his speech, with reports suggesting Trump plans to unveil newly declassified intelligence related to China’s alleged interference in US elections.



Trump drops Beijing photos ahead of speech

The Chinese embassy in Washington has responded to questions from the South China Morning Post over Trump’s expected focus on foreign digital interference and Senator Bernie Moreno’s “Cuban Missile Crisis” comparison.
Embassy spokesman Liu Chang rejected the allegations, reiterating Beijing’s position that it does not interfere in other countries’ domestic affairs.
“China has all along adhered to the principle of non-interference in others’ internal affairs,” Liu said in an emailed statement.
“The US election is an internal matter of the US. Its outcome is determined by the votes of the American people. China has never and will never interfere in the presidential elections of the US.”



Beijing denies US election interference

In the lead-up to and aftermath of the 2020 election, Trump and his allies repeatedly argued that China, not Russia, was the biggest foreign threat to the integrity of the vote.
Then-US attorney general William Barr echoed that view in a September 2020 CNN interview, saying he believed China was the most aggressive actor attempting to interfere in US elections.
After Trump lost to Joe Biden – who won 306 Electoral College votes to Trump’s 232 and secured the popular vote by roughly 7 million ballots – Trump and his allies refused to concede.
They alleged widespread voter fraud, mail-in ballot irregularities and foreign interference, frequently pointing to China as a key actor.
But a March 2021 assessment by then-director of national intelligence Avril Haines reached a different conclusion. The report said Russia carried out an influence campaign aimed at damaging Biden’s candidacy and supporting Trump, while China “considered but did not deploy” efforts intended to change the outcome of the US presidential election.
Dozens of lawsuits were filed challenging the results. Most were dismissed by courts, including those with Trump-appointed judges, for lack of sufficient evidence.
Trump continued contesting the outcome for weeks, leading to the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.


Chinese interference?

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has accused Trump of using the speech as a desperate smokescreen to distract from his electoral vulnerabilities.
“He’s scared to death that he will lose in 2026, and so he’s trying to change the subject,” Schumer told reporters outside the Capitol.
“The bottom line is, if Trump wants to win the American people over, instead of the bullshit that he’s peddling about 2020, he ought to focus on lowering people’s costs, getting rid of the chaos in administration, getting rid of the corruption,” he said.
“No one has any faith that Trump is going to tell the truth.”



Democrats: ‘he’s scared to death’

The White House has not disclosed the subject of Trump’s prime-time address, but speculation is intensifying over what he plans to announce.
Multiple American media outlets, along with conservative commentator Benny Johnson, have reported that Trump is expected to unveil newly declassified intelligence related to alleged foreign interference in the 2020 US presidential election.
Trump is expected, according to Reuters, to outline alleged voting machine vulnerabilities that he says could leave elections exposed to foreign cyberattacks.
A CBS report claimed that one component of Trump’s speech will be “previously unreported alleged Chinese meddling in US elections”.
But White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called out “anonymous sourcing” on such speculation, saying “nobody knows yet what President Trump will ultimately say”.
If confirmed, the disclosure could reignite one of the most divisive political debates in recent years, just months before November’s midterm elections, while straining ties with Beijing as China resumes purchases of US soybeans. Farmers, a key part of Trump’s political base, stand to benefit from the renewed trade.

Several of the administration’s top national security officials are also expected to appear alongside Trump, including Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel, and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
Citing a senior Trump adviser, Axios reported that the address could be a “potpourri” of issues important to the president. The report said officials were still debating whether to include the Iran war, with the focus of the speech changing “by the minute”.


Election files, voting claims, China link?

Some drama has unfolded before Trump even takes the stage.
The White House confirmed that Gabriel Perez, Trump’s long-time teleprompter operator, has been placed on unpaid administrative leave over allegations of insider trading tied to the prediction market platform Kalshi.
Perez allegedly used advance access to Trump’s prepared remarks to place bets on whether specific words or phrases, including terms like “border”, “tariffs” or country names, would appear in the president’s speeches.



Teleprompter operator on leave

Ahead of Trump’s address, former vice-president Kamala Harris says the US leader will seek to “peddle lies and conspiracy theories” about the election, adding that the 2020 vote was “not stolen”.
On social media, Harris writes that the Trump administration “got America into a war the people do not want”.
“He is attempting to distract you from that reality,” she says.


Kamala Harris weighs in

Trump repeatedly promised to avoid new military conflicts during the 2024 campaign, telling voters: “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”
But in 2026, the US is engaged in a conflict with Iran. What began as targeted strikes has expanded into a broader military confrontation, bringing rising casualties, higher oil prices and growing concerns over regional instability.
The war has become a major political liability for Trump, with polling showing deep public dissatisfaction. Recent surveys indicate that nearly 60 per cent of Americans oppose the conflict or disapprove of Trump’s handling of it, while nearly two-thirds say entering the war was the wrong decision.
With his approval ratings falling to second-term lows of around 37 per cent, driven by concerns over the war and cost-of-living pressures, the administration is under pressure to change the political narrative and rally voters around its agenda.



Public disapproval

As Trump readies attacks on Chinese interference in the 2020 elections, it remains to be seen whether such claims will dent progress in US-China ties achieved at his May summit with Xi.
Even so, signs point to high-level engagement between both sides in the coming days. Chinese foreign vice-minister Ma Zhaoxu is set to visit the US next week, sources told the South China Morning Post, in a trip expected to pave the way for Xi’s visit to Washington later in the year.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio are also both due to attend an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) meeting in the Philippines next week, raising the possibility of further engagement.


US-China ties

The US president takes to the podium in the Oval Office.
Trump immediately goes on the offensive, delivering a high-velocity opening that focuses heavily on domestic economic reclamation and border security before pivoting to international affairs.
“Before we begin, I’m proud to report that our country is wealthier than it has ever been before. We are doing great. Less than two years ago, we inherited an economic and social disaster after the worst inflation in 48 years,” he says at the start of his high-stakes address.


Trump opens with pre-2024 ‘disaster’

“We won in Venezuela, which is now working with us to produce millions and millions of barrels of oil,” Trump says.
“We are likewise winning big in Iran, and you will see the fruits of that labour very, very shortly.”


‘We won in Venezuela’

Trump says fresh evidence shows that “over a period of years, starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People’s Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history”, which he says resulted in China’s illicit acquisition of 220 million US voter files.
“That information includes names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences, and other sensitive data that would be needed to register to vote and engage in other nefarious activities, which is exactly what was happening.
“This data loss presents an unprecedented election security nightmare,” he says.
Another revelation, Trump says, is that “members of the deep state” including a “very famous group of people … in our intelligence agency” worked actively to suppress and downplay information about the extent of China’s election meddling.
They covered up from both the president and the American people, he adds.


Trump calls out China

Since returning to the White House, Trump has launched a task force to investigate alleged fraud and foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election, which he continues to claim he won.
According to Reuters, journalist John Solomon, a former Fox News contributor and founder of Just the News, is involved in the effort, alongside other former Trump officials and administration allies.
Last month, NBC News reported that the task force had begun collecting thousands of documents from US intelligence agencies, with plans to declassify records as part of its effort to examine and promote Trump’s claims of election fraud.


2020 ‘fraud’ task force

Trump takes a highly personal turn in his declassified intelligence brief, alleging that China’s state-sponsored election interference was not just systemic, but specifically targeted at his political survival during his first term.
According to Trump, the newly declassified documents reveal a targeted, multi-year campaign by Beijing to manipulate the 2018 midterms, the 2020 presidential election, and public perception of his personal performance.
“Also, in mid-2018, China was working to influence the results of the US midterm elections, and later the results of the 2020 presidential election itself. Separately, in mid-2019, the Chinese government’s strategy against the United States was focused on undermining domestic confidence in the US president,” he says.
“They wanted to just make you sound like your president wasn’t so hot when actually your president has done a great job, and they did everything possible to do exactly [that].”


Presidential target?

Trump is now detailing what he describes as an institutional effort to keep him in the dark regarding China’s election activities during his first term.
He alleges that senior officials across the CIA, NSA and FBI effectively operated a “shadow government” to prevent critical intelligence from reaching his desk or the public.
“Documents show that during this period, dozens of significant CIA and NSA reports about China’s election targeting were kept out of the presidential briefing.
“One email among intelligence analysts admitted that they had, quote, ‘deliberately massaged’ the presidential daily briefing to withhold information regarding Chinese activities related to the election.”


Intel agencies ‘concealed China’s hand’

Trump says that as part of the Chinese government’s strategy, it sought to influence US business leaders to “turn against” the US president while also seeking to pay US journalists “large sums of money” to write negative articles about the president.
“The Chinese government wanted US president to lose the next election, and the reason they wanted me to lose is because they knew I was wise to them, charged them billions and billions of dollars worth of tariffs, and built the strongest military anywhere in the world,” he says.


Business and journalism

Trump says a third set of documents the White House is releasing proves that “for many years, Americans were blatantly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure, including electronic voting machines and ballot counting systems, dishonest almost all”.
“As one assessment states, we judge that the United States adversaries – including, at a minimum, Russia, China and North Korea as well as non-state groups – have the capability to compromise your election infrastructure,” he says.
He says documents also reveal that “even when significant evidence of fraud has been detected, it has been buried and covered up”.
Among the disclosures are FBI files detailing evidence of alleged fraud by a large-scale voter registration operation in Michigan, he says.


Americans ‘blatantly lied to’

Trump has turned the spotlight directly onto the physical and digital core of the American voting process: electronic voting machines, ballot counting systems, and centralised databases.
He claims that the newly released documents, spanning from January 2020 all the way to June 2026, prove that senior government officials have long known the nation’s voting infrastructure is highly vulnerable to foreign state actors.
“Hundreds of millions of US voter files are in the hands of foreign governments. Our machines and ballot counting systems are exposed to hacking and manipulation and corruption. China and other countries have been trying to meddle in our elections. Evidence of fraud has been buried.”


Domestic and geopolitical convergence

Trump says “a stunning investigation” by the Department of Homeland Security identified some 278,000 non-citizens who are registered to vote in federal elections.
“Hundreds of millions of US voter files are in the hands of foreign governments, our machines and ballot counting systems are exposed to hacking and manipulation and corruption,” he says.
“China and other countries have been trying to meddle in our elections. Evidence of fraud has been buried. Hundreds of thousands of non-citizens and dead people are listed and active on the voter rolls.”


Non-citizens, dead people

Trump says his administration is in the process of notifying the states whose election data was “compromised” by China and many others.
He says his administration will be working closely to mitigate any harm and taking swift action to ensure that sensitive voter data is better protected.
“We can never be bought. We can never be hacked. We can never watch a stolen election again,” he says.


‘We can never watch a stolen election again’

Trump calls out broadcasters NBC and ABC – which are not airing Trump’s address – saying they are not covering his speech “because of the fact that they don’t like the topic because they know how corrupt our system is and they don’t want to reveal it”.
“They and others in the media are part of a plot,” Trump says, threatening to revoke their licences.
“They want to continue this fraud for whatever reason. They want to keep it going. They want to protect the radical left.”


Swipe at NBC, ABC

Trump’s accusation that China meddled in the 2020 election data stands in stark contrast to the friendly, conciliatory tone of his visit to Beijing in May, and is expected to cast uncertainty over plans for a reciprocal visit by President Xi Jinping in September.



Shadow over Xi summit?

The Trump administration has moved against the Federal Election Commission (FEC), firing several commissioners in a move critics say could weaken an independent watchdog overseeing campaign finance and election rules.
Trump has argued that federal election institutions need major changes, claiming the current system has failed to address vulnerabilities in the voting process.
Created in 1974 after the Watergate scandal, the bipartisan FEC is responsible for enforcing campaign finance laws, tracking political donations and spending, and guarding against corruption and foreign influence in US elections.



Election watchdog targeted

Since returning to the presidency after his 2024 election victory, Trump has used national addresses to showcase claimed economic and military successes and defend his policies amid domestic and international criticism.
January 20, 2025: second inaugural address
Trump began his second term by declaring the start of America’s “golden age”. He outlined an “America first” agenda focused on border security, energy expansion, economic growth and peace through strength, while criticising the policies of the previous Joe Biden administration.
April 2, 2025: “Liberation Day” tariffs
Just months later, Trump announced sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs on countries around the world, with rates ranging from 10 per cent to 50 per cent. He called the move a historic trade reset aimed at protecting American workers and boosting domestic industry.

December 17, 2025: year-end address
In an 18-minute speech, Trump reviewed his administration’s first year and gave it “straight A’s” on border security, inflation and foreign policy. He promoted the “Make America Great Again” agenda and looked ahead to the 2026 midterm elections.
January 3, 2026: Venezuela operation
Following an overnight strike, Trump praised the capture of Nicolas Maduro as a major military success. He announced temporary US oversight of Venezuela focused on stability, oil cost recovery and creating what he described as “good neighbours”.
February 24, 2026: State of the Union
Trump delivered a record-length State of the Union address lasting around 1 hour and 48 minutes under the theme “America at 250”. He highlighted economic gains, border policies, the Venezuela operation and honoured national heroes while criticising the Democrats.
April 1, 2026: Operation Epic Fury
In a prime-time national address, Trump updated Americans on the Iran conflict, claiming decisive US victories against Iran’s military, stating Iran’s navy and air force were decimated and that core objectives were nearing completion or already achieved. Yet he simultaneously warned of continued heavy strikes for another two to three weeks, threatened to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Age”, and left open attacks on energy and oil infrastructure.


Trump’s big speeches

Trump wraps up his nearly-30-minute address to the nation, which focused on Chinese interference in US elections in an unprecedented and wide-ranging attack on Beijing.
He mentions the Iran war only once at the start of his speech, despite the conflict weighing on his popularity and dimming his prospects in the November midterms.


Focus on China

The conflict with Iran began in February when the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury, targeting Iranian military sites, nuclear facilities and senior leaders.
The strikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other officials, triggering a wider regional escalation. Recently, Trump has claimed that Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader, is “90 per cent gone”.
Iran retaliated with hundreds of missiles and drones targeting Israel, US bases in the Gulf, and allied positions. Tehran also seized control of the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting global oil shipments and driving energy prices higher.
The fighting spread across the region, including renewed clashes with Hezbollah in Lebanon and attacks across Gulf states, leaving thousands dead and millions displaced.

Efforts to halt the conflict produced a brief ceasefire in April and a June agreement to end hostilities and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but both attempts collapsed.
This month, Iran was accused of attacking commercial vessels in the strait, prompting new US strikes on Iranian coastal and naval targets, the reinstatement of a naval blockade, and a War Powers notification to Congress.
Trump this week also declared the US the “guardian” of the Strait of Hormuz and proposed a 20 per cent toll on cargo passing through the waterway to “reimburse” security costs. The statement caused market jitters, with oil prices rising and stocks falling. Trump abandoned the proposal the next day.


US-Iran war so far

Click here for the main points from Trump’s address to the United States.


Trump speech takeaways

Click here for analysis of Trump’s address to the United States.


Trump speech snap analysis

Trump has repeatedly accused China of meddling in elections against him.
In 2018, he told a United Nations meeting that Beijing did not want him to win that year’s midterm elections because he was “the first president to ever challenge China on trade”.
“Regrettably, we found that China has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming 2018 election, coming up in November, against my administration,” he said, without giving evidence.
He echoed that sentiment two years later, telling Reuters that he believed China “will do anything they can to have me lose this race”.
He said he believed Beijing wanted his then Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, to win the presidential election to ease the pressure Trump had placed on China over trade and other issues.
Beijing denied the claims.


Trump launches rare broadside against China on US election interference – as it happened

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Trump’s speech focused on Chinese interference in domestic politics, called out local TV networks and mentioned Iran war once

Trump’s speech focused on Chinese interference in domestic politics, called out local TV networks and mentioned Iran war once