President Donald Trump has insisted for years that the 2020 election was stolen from him. But according to a reporter covering his White House, the people Trump himself tasked with proving it came up disastrously empty.
In a primetime address Thursday night, Trump alleged that China interfered in the 2020 race and that intelligence officials had buried the evidence, releasing declassified documents he falsely said showed the largest compromise of election data in history.
On a Zeteo livestream reacting to the speech, senior political correspondent Asawin Suebsaeng said the outlet's reporting showed Trump's White House had been repeatedly briefed that its own hand-picked investigators — described by Suebsaeng as hardcore, pro-Trump election deniers placed in sensitive posts — failed to find proof that China flipped votes to Joe Biden.
"Even these guys, the most internet brain-cooked people on the planet who Donald Trump put in highly sensitive position powers could not find that actual smoking gun, even though they were supposedly given everything that they so desired," Suebsaeng said.
"So that is why when he went out there tonight, you and other eagle-eared or eagle-eyed listeners may have noticed that the speech was written in this kind of way that was just jack-full of innuendo. They talk about attempts, they talk about intelligence, but they would never talk about that we found a smoking gun that showed the election was stolen by China in Joe Biden's favor in 2020."
Suebsaeng said that lack of evidence led Trump to launch into a barrage of different asides.
"He'd say like, 'Oh, we know a lot of bad stuff happened.' 'Oh, we can never have another stolen election again.' He never actually connected the two thoughts in his speechwriter-written speech tonight. That is because even these conspiratorial crackpots who he's employing right now could not find the smoking gun," Suebsaeng said.
Suebsaeng's reporting tracked with an acknowledgment from Trump's own team.
In a briefing hours before the speech, a White House official said none of the released material alleged that any votes were switched or machines hacked, according to CBS News. Analysts who reviewed the same files found nothing to back the claim.
A March 2021 intelligence assessment concluded that China did not deploy efforts to change the election's outcome, and found no tampering with vote-counting.
Trump lost to Biden by more than 7 million votes, and 306 to 232 in the Electoral College. The result was affirmed across dozens of court rulings.
“Even these conspiratorial crackpots who [Trump] is employing right now could not find the smoking gun.”@swin24 shares exclusive reporting on how even the most thorough investigations could not prove any Chinese interference in favor of Biden in the 2020 election. pic.twitter.com/btUkeAAKPN
— Zeteo (@zeteo_news) July 17, 2026