Mr. Navarro, good, uh, good morning to you. A little smoky out here.
A little smoky.
How are you dealing with that?
I never -- I never smoked, except when Canada has wildfires. So anyway, uh, I'm going to -- what I like to do is make a relatively brief statement with some analytics in it, and then we'll ask a few questions. The topic's going to be, uh, simply what, uh, what was revealed last night, and the ensuing coverage.
So, um what I want to start with is, is facts. There's a simple fact that the American people have lost a lot of confidence in our election system and there is a deep, deep, deep division on whether the 2020 election was stolen. That's not what last night was about. What last night was about is protecting future elections.
But the fact that there's such dissonance between some people who view that 2020 election as not stolen, some people do. And the question, I think the way to frame -- the way to think about this is based on what was released, and I'm going to go through that. Based on what was released, is the probability that that election was stolen higher today in people's minds than it was before we got the data?
And I would argue that, certainly, there's no question, whether you have a very low view of whether it was stolen, it's got to creep up a little bit because of what came out. If you have a high view, it's going to maybe pop to certainty, and everything in between. So if you look at what happened last night, you start with, uh, the, the China, uh, basically hacking, uh, our data systems in a way, uh, not just to buy our voter files, to tune of 120 million Americans, but also going into the metadata, which has more information than what you can buy commercially.
Clearly, if you do that in anticipation of the 2020 election, you have malintent in terms of what you might do with that election. Um, so that should raise really deep concerns among the American people. It's not the first time this has kind of happened. What's different about what has happened here is that the press writ large, particularly on the left side, doesn't want anybody to be concerned about that.
Um, when they really should be deeply concerned. The thing that is troubling to me, uh, is the presidential daily briefing -- I want to tell everybody in America how important that is to your safety and welfare. Every day, that's why they call it a daily briefing, the intelligence community comes in and provides its assessment of the issues of the day that should concern the president and what might require action.
And we have revelations based on documents that have been released, that show that there was division among the intelligence community about whether or not the Chinese were influencing the election and were trying to steal the election or not, but we did not hear that division. There was one very chilling comment by an FBI agent who bragged about running a shadow government.
OK? A shadow government, basically to keep key intelligence off the desk of the president. And what's interesting is left saying, well, we were actually in control of those agencies at the time, but the problem we always have with the deep state, which is exactly what it is, is that when you come in and have politicals in charge, you have people who are career bureaucrats underneath who really cause, uh, they have a lot of power to keep things from you and to do things they shouldn't do. So that's number two.
That should be deeply, deeply, deeply troubling to both sides of the aisle. The third issue is something that I never really addressed in my -- what I call the Navarro Report, which came out in 2020. It's on my website, Peternavarro.com. I urge everybody to look at it. I'll come back to it in in a minute.
Um, I never really addressed the voting machine concern. That's been a concern of others.
Um, but what was released last night in the documents, um, indicates very clearly that voting machines not only are vulnerable to being used to sway elections, but they may well be undetectable when that kind of nefarious activity takes place. So that's a clear marker. And again, the, the dismissive remarks from the left are, well, that's all from Venezuela.
But that misses the key point that this is -- it's possible to use those machines to go in and turn an election. The fourth big reveal last night and, uh, Markwayne Mullin, our great Secretary of DHS, I think he's going to be across the street at 11:00. Um, close to 300,000 illegal voters were found by DHS.
Now, uh, first of all, that was a small number of states.
OK. And so there's that. Um, but when you look at how elections turn, particularly in the battleground states, um, it can come down to very small margins. For example, Georgia, 12,000 vote victory margin for Joe Biden. Now, when I did the Navarro report, when I focused on Georgia, I made the following observations.
One of the big changes that Georgia did was get rid of essentially, uh, signature verification for ballots. They got rid of signature verification. At the same time, they dramatically expanded the ability of people to vote absentee. So what you had was the number of rejected ballots by percent, falling from about five percent in 2016 election, uh, to virtually zero, OK. Virtually zero in the 2020 election.
OK? So there's a 12,000 vote victory margin we see for Biden but when you get rid of signature verification and you effectively almost double the amount of ballots absentee and two thirds or more, the ballots go for Joe Biden, what you wind up doing statistically is likely turning a 12,000 vote loss for Donald Trump into probably a 30,000 vote or more victory for Donald Trump.
And that's just one state and that's how this happens. So my concern here the purpose of that last night was not to prove anything about the 2020 election, it was to -- it was basically to look forward of how we can fix things. But my concern here is that we've created a system where we don't have the appropriate checks, signature verification ID of the voters themselves.
At the same time that we've loosened absentee ballots up so much that it's easy to slip things in. I call it the grand stuff, the ballot box strategy. Again, I urge you to read the three volume, uh, Navarro report. And so we've got our work cut out for us. The president has proposed passage of the SAVE America Act, and it literally not only has support of 80 percent or more of the American people, it actually checks every box needed to ensure the integrity of our elections.
So what I would ask everybody in the media to do, which they didn't do before they filed their stories today, is actually read the data that's now up on whitehouse.gov. I mean, I'm astonished that reporters could go out and write authoritative stories, trashing, in many cases, what the president said last night, when they literally, unless they're the fastest reader in the world, didn't have the time to review the documents.
So I thank you for letting me go on, and I'll take some questions. We'll start with, uh, with the pool carrier here, so yes, ma'am.
Thank you, Mr. Navarro. Um, do you foresee any sort of updates to our trade policy with China, given all these allegations on their interference?
No, I think they're, uh, they're separate lanes. China has already predictably denied everything, which you would expect. This story -- this isn't a story about China, it's about the American refusal at the political level to safeguard our election system and that happened because there are nefarious actors domestically who wanted that 2020 election to go in a different way than the voters did.
One follow up, one follow up. If that's the case, I mean, if China is trying to influence our elections, why would they not be punished for it?
That's a serious matter. It's not what I'm going to be talking about today. I'm sure there's going to be some discussions about that. But I think the focus needs to be on the fact that there's holes in our election system that can and will be exploited by bad actors, both foreign and domestic. And that's why the SAVE America Act is critical, uh, to the hinge here.
I mean, it's, the most reasonable bill in the world. It's ID check. You can bring in an ID, check whether you're a citizen. I mean, come on? Uh, sir.
Yeah, thank you. You mentioned the SAVE America Act.
Yeah.
The president posted today on Truth Social, I'll quote it, great reviews on speech last night, big audience, pass the SAVE America Act. Does his speech last night get the SAVE America Act over the finish line in your opinion?
My original question is, uh, in people's minds, do you think going across America is the probability that the 2020 election was stolen, has that gone up in people's minds because of the evidence they've seen, the answer is unequivocally yes. So it's important beyond measure to pass the Save America Act and I think there'll be even more support.
It's over 80 percent now. It should go to -- I mean, who can object to it other than the, uh, the radical Democrats who like to mess with our election? I don't want to get too partisan here, but let's be clear. I mean, you just -- I mean, I came home last night from the speech. I was honored to be here, and, uh, turned the television on and CNN's there, and they're just -- I mean, they haven't read anything, and they're just spinning their talking points.
It's just total denial. And look, I would ask the media to do a little gut check here on this particular issue and try to look beyond your Trump derangement syndrome and your partisan, this and that, and see that our election system is highly vulnerable now, and 2020 was a watershed in that vulnerability because COVID enabled a lot of so-called reforms that essentially created vulnerabilities.
Yes, sir.
Was this issue raised by the president when he visited China early this early this year?
Uh, I'm not sure if that was. Yes, sir.
Will President Trump support and sign the Russia sanctions bill in the Senate, which imposes --
That's not -- out of my lane. Yes, sir.
Given what the president said last night, do you think he should still invite President Xi to the White House in September?
Above my pay grade. I think, again, what happened last night is about raising people's awareness through credible information that hitherto has been classified. I mean, think about this President Trump has released these declassified information, which never should have been classified, to help the American people understand the vulnerabilities in our election system.
The SAVE America Act is the key to saving that. I'm going to take one more. Yes, ma'am.
[Inaudible] what's your answer to the opposition, say that the President might want to delegitimize the results? What's your answer to the opposition, the Democrats who say that the president might want to delegitimize --
Might want to want?
To delegitimize the midterm elections.
It's just spin. I mean, look, if you pass the SAVE America Act and you get voter ID and, and proof of citizenship and you crack down on this reckless use of absentee ballots, uh, we'll have a more secure election with integrity and, most importantly, the American people will have more faith in the elections and are more likely to vote.
I mean, one of the things I'm concerned about is people are so disgusted with how insecure our elections are that they stay home, that democracy withers when you don't have an election system that works. Um, C-Span, I thank you. Uh, and I'm out of here. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot.