First Thing: Trump launches wide-ranging and unverified attack on integrity of US electoral system

US president accused China of meddling in his 2020 election defeat and said system was ‘catastrophically’ unfair. Plus Christopher Nolan’s epic take on The Odyssey hits the big screen

Good morning. Donald Trump accused China of interfering with the 2020 election in a primetime televised address that laid bare his continuing obsession with his defeat to Joe Biden, but which opponents warned was a smokescreen for him to meddle in the forthcoming congressional midterms. Trump’s claims are unverified.

In a 25-minute speech, the US president cast extraordinary doubts on the integrity of the US electoral process, saying it was “catastrophically” short of standards of fairness and trust, while vulnerable to trespassing by foreign powers. Democrats warned that Trump was trying to sow confusion, spread misinformation and lay the groundwork to challenge the results of the midterm elections.

What was the aim of Trump’s address? In this analysis piece, Sam Levine explains how the president is using his office and US intelligence agencies to try to undermine confidence in elections. Instead of offering smoking-gun evidence, the release of new papers seemed to be a return to a classic Trump strategy of flooding the zone with information in an attempt to muddy the waters.

What did US networks do about broadcasting Trump’s allegations? The US’s largest television stations split on whether to air Trump’s White House address, which was filled with unproven accusations. While CNN, ABC and NBC chose not to air the speech live, CBS, Fox News and MS Now (formerly MSNBC) aired at least large portions of the speech live.

What did Rubio say? “They can call themselves anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist, communist, anarchist or Marxist. It’s always the same. It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality and justice liberation – an overwhelming need to tear down, to wreck, what is beautiful and what is right on behalf of people who are only filled with ugliness,” he said. He called leftists “an encroaching darkness” and “the enemies of civilization”.

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