From WNYC, I'm Brian Lair.

This is my daily politics podcast.

It's Monday, July 20th.

So, which blew more smoke across the United States last week?

The Canadian wildfires or President Trump's

Thursday night speech about election security, perhaps the biggest takeaway from the speech,

according to many election and political analysts, seems to be that he still doesn't have evidence

of China or anyone else preventing or flipping any votes and is lost to Joe Biden in

2020. And he didn't actually claim that they did. He could only go as far as this in this

22nd clip. 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,

resulting in China's illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files.

And reportedly that voter information came largely from publicly available lists that anyone

could access.

But no, he didn't even claim that China actually changed who won any state in 2020 or even

that they tried.

So why are the people who really care about free and fair elections

and about trust in elections still worried? Well, because they fear Trump might use the smoke

from Thursday night's speech, thin as it is compared to the wildfires, to declare some kind

of state of emergency as the midterm elections get closer to suppress many Americans

votes. Ari Berman has the goods on what that state of emergency might include if the president

dares to go there and also the politics that might encourage him or possibly prevent him

...