Andrea Austria / Media Matters
Research/Study
John Solomon is on a media tour hyping claims from Trump's election address
Solomon is claiming Trump’s speech was “100% accurate,” that he “proved election interference by showing that China had targeted our voter registration data,” and that “the SAVE Act has to be mandatory”
Written by Gideon Taaffe
Research contributions from Isabella Corrao
Published
Following President Donald Trump’s July 16 prime-time address regarding supposed interference in U.S. elections by China, Trump adviser and election conspiracy theorist John Solomon has been on a media tour claiming that Trump’s speech was “100% accurate,” that he “proved election interference by showing that China had targeted our voter registration data,” and that “the SAVE Act has to be mandatory.”
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Trump appointed election conspiracy theorist John Solomon to a White House task force and used documents he declassified to claim Chinese interference in US elections, despite “zero evidence” of votes flipped
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- John Solomon, a right-wing journalist and host on Real America’s Voice, has spent years pushing election conspiracy theories “which have recently fixated on China.” According to Media Matters’ Julie Millican, “Since March, he has repeatedly claimed that the 2020 election was not secure because China allegedly accessed voter registration data in multiple states.” [MS NOW, 7/16/26]
- Trump recently appointed Solomon as a “special government employee” to run a “task force on ‘transparency.’” The task force reportedly gathered “thousands of pages of documents from U.S. intelligence agencies, with plans to declassify some of them, which would give President Donald Trump an opportunity to amplify new accusations about past elections.” Trump’s July 16 speech was based on these declassified documents. [The New York Times, 5/29/26; NBC News, 6/30/26; Media Matters, 7/21/26]
- On July 16, Trump gave a speech claiming there were vulnerabilities in the U.S. election infrastructure that China may have influenced. In his speech, Trump accused China of carrying out “the largest compromise of election data in history” by obtaining millions of U.S. voter files prior to the 2020 election. Many of these files were publicly available, and a federal intelligence report found no evidence of China interfering with U.S. elections in 2020. NPR reported that Trump also “used his remarks Thursday to make a new push for the SAVE America Act, which would, among other things, require Americans to present proof of citizenship when registering to vote and a form of ID when voting.” [NPR, 7/16/26]
- After Trump’s speech, Solomon admitted “the intelligence community has zero evidence” that a foreign power flipped any votes in recent elections. After MS NOW’s Vaughn Hillyard asked, “Can you acknowledge that there were no votes changed in 2020?” Solomon replied, “All I can acknowledge is what the intelligence shows. I only know—the intelligence community has zero evidence that … a foreign power flipped the vote in 2020, ’22, or ’24.” [The New Republic, 7/17/26]
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Following Trump’s speech, Solomon has been on a right-wing media tour fearmongering about election security
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- The night of the speech, Solomon appeared on CBS to claim: “We knew our election machines were vulnerable, we did not patch them. We knew 230 million Americans' voter data was stolen by Chinese spies.” He later elaborated: “They can vote in your name, and you would show up one day and you wouldn't be able to vote because they would tell you someone else voted for you. They could register you in another location. You would never know that they voted for you in another location because they have all your data — everything they need to fill out in a legitimate registration form. They could go and change something on your address and when you showed up with your ballot or with your ID — oh, you are not that person, you're registered at another address.” [CBS, CBS News Special Report, 7/16/26]
- On Steve Bannon’s War Room the next day, Solomon admitted, “There's no evidence yet that a machine flipped the vote. … That’s fine. That doesn't mean we aren’t with a glass chin with machines that are hackable and with voter data in the hands of Chinese spies that can be manipulated in any future election.” Later, Solomon claimed “the best way to guard against the frauds that were divulged last night” is “to have a voter ID that you have to show.” He continued, “The SAVE America Act has to be mandatory.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 7/17/26]
- On The Steve Gruber Show, Solomon said China could change your voter registration without your knowledge and “vote on your behalf,” but acknowledged there is no evidence that China did that in 2020. Solomon: “I don’t know whether China was behind those examples and anecdotes that we got in 2020, but the fact that they could be — the fact that they might be in the future is a clear and present threat to our election integrity.” Later in the show, Solomon said his task force focused on election integrity “soley because the machine vulnerabilities identified in the documents could be fixed before Election Day.” [Real America’s Voice, The Steve Gruber Show, 7/17/26, 7/17/26]
- On The Sean Hannity Show, Solomon said “every word of President Trump’s speech” was “100% accurate” according to intelligence chiefs. Solomon also claimed: “I think the headline that maybe some people missed yesterday is that the president laid out evidence of a specific foreign election interference.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 7/17/26]
- On The Glenn Beck Show, John Solomon responded to a question about if there will be a “perp walk” as a result of the released documents, saying, “I think it’s possible — I think you’ll see terminations first.” He continued, “This was one of the widest secrets in the intelligence community, that some intelligence analysts used their power to keep the president in the dark about a 220-million-voter data breach, about the vulnerability of machines in elections, about Venezuela’s successful hack of a voter machine in a controlled environment — not in an election but in a laboratory setting,” adding, “All of those things are things that are actionable.” [Blaze TV, The Glenn Beck Show, 7/17/26]
- On the July 20 edition of War Room, Solomon said that Trump’s speech “caused more people to come forward to the task force and divulge new things that we’re trying to get our hands on,” adding, “We're looking at many other things.” He continued, “If Americans want to prove all the fake news media wrong, … there could be millions of people if they wanted to call the Senate and say I don't believe NBC, CNN, and ABC and all those who told me there was nothing there. I know there’s something there — pass the SAVE Act.” Solomon also claimed Trump “for the first time did what the intelligence community failed to do in 2020 — he proved election interference by showing that China had targeted our voter registration data.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 7/20/26, 7/20/26]
- On the July 20 edition of The Sean Hannity Show, Solomon said, “People like David Ignatius, who I used to work with at The Washington Post, would like to make up minds for people” on election integrity. He continued, “They don't trust the American people to make up their own minds, so they spend a lot of time calling facts that disagree with their assertions to be disinformation or to try to debunk things that are factually true.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 7/20/26]