During his prime-time address on Thursday night, President Trump claimed that the People’s Republic of China wanted him to resign during his first term.
“As the documents we are releasing show, CIA reporting explicitly stated, ‘in mid-2018, the Chinese communist party’s policy was to leverage all domestic and foreign elements that were opposed to the U.S. president in an effort to reduce the U.S. president’s votes, and make him resign or prevent his reelection,” he said.
The president further alleged that China meddled in the 2018 mid-term elections and the 2020 elections, adding that China sought to undermine domestic confidence in the U.S. president during the year 2019.
At least one “CIA Note” posted to the White House website said that China had accessed data from the 2015 presidential elections.
“China was working to influence the results of the U.S. mid-term elections, and later the resuits of the 2020 U.S. Presidential elections,” it said. “As part of this campaign, China was analyzing the 2015 U.S. Presidential elections and identifying U.S. states who voted for the U.S. President.”
“The Chinese would then identify sectors within these states that voted to support the U.S. President’s political party, and would attempt to make these sectors experience negative financial consequences by levying tariffs on exports to China from those sectors,” it added. “The Chinese hoped that these measures would induce representatives from these sectors to lobby the U.S. President.”
No further evidence supporting the allegations has been presented as of this writing beyond the CIA note.
China rejected the president’s claims in a statement on Thursday night.
“China has all along adhered to the principle of non-interference in other’s internal affairs,” the statement read. “The U.S. election is an internal matter of the U.S. Its outcome is determined by the votes of the American people. China has never and will never interfere in the presidential elections of the U.S.”