‘Um, No’: CNN’s John King Says He’d Never Heard a Primetime Speech Like the One Trump Just Gave

CNN Chief National Correspondent John King said President Donald Trump’s primetime address was unlike any he had heard before.

On Thursday, the president delivered a 26-minute speech from the White House, where he cast doubt on the integrity of elections in the U.S. CNN did not air Trump’s address live, but rather played snippets from it and fact-checked them while Trump was still delivering his remarks.

King recapped the president’s most serious claims.

“Ominous words from the president. It sounded more like a spy novel,” King said to Kaitlan Collins on The Source. “He focused mostly on China. And he said he was releasing all of these new documents tonight that were going to prove more things about China, he says, trying to get voter roll information, trying to learn about how to pry into voting machines and voting systems. He never directly connected any of that to changing an election result. That’s important. I don’t have the documents in front of me. We’ll see if they get you there. But the president never did.”

He went on to note that Trump alleged that China helped the government of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro rig an election in 2020.

“That is the only specific claim of actually rigging or changing an election result the president made,” King continued. “Much of it was, again, China’s trying to do this. Russia did a little bit of that, but again, focused mostly on China, about things we’ve known, about things that have been in past intelligence reports about China. Yes, trying to get information about U.S. voters. Yes, trying to test the vulnerabilities of U.S. election systems. But nowhere did the president in that speech connected to, ‘They changed the result in this state,’ or, ‘They changed the result in this precinct. There was no connecting the dots to that point in the speech.”

King said much of Trump’s speech was his “greatest hits.”

Collins asked King if he had heard a primetime speech like the one he had just seen:

COLLINS: John, as someone who covered the White House, have you ever seen a primetime address or heard a primetime address like this one?

KING: Um, no. No. And, again, again, if the president has new information about foreign meddling, foreign meddling is a big deal in our elections, has been for quite a long time, has been quite a long time. It’s gotten caught up in a very polarized debate because of the Mueller investigation, because of after 2016. It is impossible now in the Donald Trump era to have an adult conversation about a very legitimate issue. It would be nice if Democrats and Republicans could get together, as the president said at one point, why can’t we do this on a bipartisan basis? Well, he’s the reason they can’t do some of it on a bipartisan basis because he keeps telling Democrats they’re crooks and they stole elections.

But no, the ominous tone of it, you know, presidents speak to the nation when wars start. Presidents speak to the nations after tragedies. Presidents do speak to the nation to ask for big policy priorities. But we’re 15.5 weeks from an election in which, you know, the numbers, the president’s approval ratings in the 30s, his party is in deep trouble. This is not the issue they think is going to save them in November.

Trump has falsely insisted that the 2020 election was rigged against him. During his State of the Union address this year, he claimed that the only way Democrats can win elections is if they cheat.”

The president has urged the Senate to pass the SAVE Act, which would require voters to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote and a photo ID when voting. The legislation has stalled in the Senate thanks to the 60-vote cloture threshold needed to pass most bills. Trump has so far unsuccessfully lobbied Senate Republicans to eliminate the current cloture rule.

Watch above via CNN.

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