In Speech, Trump Alleges Plots by China to Sway U.S. Elections 74%

By Harrison Berger73%

7/16/2026, 7:25:00 PM

BS Summary: This article contains 21 faulty reasoning types, including Burden of Proof, Ambiguity (Equivocation), and Unattributed Quote, with Appeal to Authority as the most egregious example at 21.6% saturation with 91 hits. Analysis detected 940 faulty-reasoning hits from 422 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 66.1% and a BS Rank of 74% (5,728 of 21,887 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 73.80% of the article peer group.

In a late night speech from the White House on Thursday, President Donald Trump alleged that the Chinese government interfered in the U.S. elections in 2018 and 2020. 
Trump cited CIA reports to claim that China attempted to manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden and acquired 220 million U.S. voter files containing personal information. 
He also said the documents showed that “dozens” of CIA reports about Chinese targeting were kept out of briefings delivered to Trump. 
“They had deliberately massaged the presidential daily briefing to withhold information regarding Chinese activities related to the election” Trump said, claiming that an FBI official accused bureaucrats of “running a shadow government” to keep intelligence of China’s election meddling from becoming known. 
Trump said that he was “asking the office of the Director of National Intelligence, the DOJ, the FBI and the CIA to investigate how and why such crucial information was hidden to fire those involved in the coverup, and to file criminal charges, if appropriate.” 
Trump also used his speech to point out what he said were vulnerabilities in U.S. electronic voting systems. 
The White House released documents Trump claimed proved “that our government has long known these machines are extremely exposed to attack.” 
The White House also released documents it said revealed “evidence of alleged fraud by a large-scale voter registration operation in Michigan.” 
The White House website to access declassified documents on the alleged plots temporarily crashed when people attempted to enter the site. 
The New York Times reported that voter files Trump said were acquired by China are “publicly available records.” 
An October 2020 memorandum prepared by the national intelligence officer for cyber and director of national intelligence found “a pro-China influence network on U.S. social media platforms posted messages supporting Beijing’s views that included some English-language content denigrating the President and his Administration’s policies.” 
They concluded that “the activities of these networks are consistent with what we would expect to see from intelligence services or similar actors taking steps to build nascent online influence capabilities.” 
The memo noted that the U.S. “cannot” actually “directly tie this network to the Chinese Government,” concluding that Chinese people may have taken “low level exploratory steps to undermine” Trump in 2020 but that those efforts were not carried out under the direction of the Chinese government itself. 
Trump critics noted similarities between the allegations made by the president and those made by Hillary Clinton during the Russiagate scandal, labeling Trump’s allegations as “Chinagate.” 
Article reasoning-pattern comparisonThis article: 11.6%Harrison Berger: 6.8%The American Conservative: 8.1%Confirmation Bias11.6%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 0.4%The American Conservative: 0.6%Anchoring Bias0.0%This article: 7.3%Harrison Berger: 5.5%The American Conservative: 3.8%Availability Heuristic7.3%This article: 10.4%Harrison Berger: 1.1%The American Conservative: 1.4%Representativeness Heuristic10.4%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 0.4%The American Conservative: 1.9%Hindsight Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 4.2%The American Conservative: 3.2%Overconfidence Bias0.0%This article: 8.5%Harrison Berger: 12.5%The American Conservative: 8.1%Framing Effect8.5%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 0.5%The American Conservative: 0.4%Loss Aversion0.0%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 0.4%The American Conservative: 0.6%Status Quo Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 0.1%The American Conservative: 0.2%Sunk Cost Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 1.4%The American Conservative: 1.8%Optimism Bias0.0%This article: 4.3%Harrison Berger: 2.3%The American Conservative: 2.7%Pessimism Bias4.3%This article: 14.2%Harrison Berger: 12.2%The American Conservative: 10.6%Negativity Bias14.2%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 2.2%The American Conservative: 1.1%Self-Serving Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 1.5%The American Conservative: 2.3%Fundamental Attribution Error0.0%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 0.3%The American Conservative: 0.2%Actor-Observer Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 1.6%The American Conservative: 2.4%In-Group Bias0.0%This article: 6.2%Harrison Berger: 1.8%The American Conservative: 2.2%Out-Group Homogeneity Bias6.2%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 0.4%The American Conservative: 1.5%Halo Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 0.1%The American Conservative: 0.4%Horn Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 0.0%The American Conservative: 0.1%Dunning-Kruger Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 2.4%The American Conservative: 1.4%Recency Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 0.5%The American Conservative: 0.6%Primacy Effect0.0%This article: 11.4%Harrison Berger: 0.2%The American Conservative: 0.1%Blind-Spot Bias11.4%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 2.0%The American Conservative: 2.8%Ad Hominem0.0%This article: 10.0%Harrison Berger: 0.7%The American Conservative: 2.2%Straw Man10.0%This article: 21.6%Harrison Berger: 7.8%The American Conservative: 4.3%Appeal to Authority21.6%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 3.0%The American Conservative: 3.3%False Dilemma0.0%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 2.8%The American Conservative: 2.4%Slippery Slope0.0%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 0.2%The American Conservative: 0.2%Circular Reasoning0.0%This article: 5.2%Harrison Berger: 7.1%The American Conservative: 10.3%Hasty Generalization5.2%This article: 5.0%Harrison Berger: 0.1%The American Conservative: 0.4%Red Herring5.0%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 0.8%The American Conservative: 0.7%Bandwagon0.0%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 7.1%The American Conservative: 5.8%Appeal to Emotion0.0%This article: 7.3%Harrison Berger: 2.1%The American Conservative: 1.6%Begging the Question7.3%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 3.5%The American Conservative: 4.6%Post Hoc (False Cause)0.0%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 0.3%The American Conservative: 0.3%Tu Quoque0.0%This article: 20.6%Harrison Berger: 0.8%The American Conservative: 0.9%Burden of Proof20.6%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 0.0%The American Conservative: 0.2%Appeal to Nature0.0%This article: 6.2%Harrison Berger: 0.1%The American Conservative: 0.5%Composition/Division6.2%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 1.0%The American Conservative: 2.1%Anecdotal0.0%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 0.2%The American Conservative: 0.2%No True Scotsman0.0%This article: 17.8%Harrison Berger: 2.5%The American Conservative: 2.1%Ambiguity (Equivocation)17.8%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 0.0%The American Conservative: 0.0%Gambler’s Fallacy0.0%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 0.0%The American Conservative: 0.1%Middle Ground0.0%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 0.0%The American Conservative: 0.1%Personal Incredulity0.0%This article: 10.7%Harrison Berger: 0.2%The American Conservative: 0.2%Special Pleading10.7%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 0.3%The American Conservative: 0.3%Genetic Fallacy0.0%This article: 15.2%Harrison Berger: 6.5%The American Conservative: 3.4%Unattributed Quote15.2%This article: 12.8%Harrison Berger: 4.3%The American Conservative: 2.1%Quote-first Misdirection12.8%This article: 11.6%Harrison Berger: 10.8%The American Conservative: 17.3%Biased Writer Voice11.6%This article: 5.0%Harrison Berger: 1.3%The American Conservative: 2.9%Indoctrination5.0%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 1.2%The American Conservative: 1.1%Politically Left Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 1.0%The American Conservative: 3.9%Politically Right Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Harrison Berger: 0.4%The American Conservative: 0.5%Attempt to Sell a Product or S…0.0%

422 words analyzed.

Speakers

3speakers55%attributed speech188writer words
Voice mapSelect a segment to jump to its words
Writer's voice • 10 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 1 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 28 words • 100.0% coverageDonald Trump • 26 words • 0.0% coverageDonald Trump • 22 words • 100.0% coverageDonald Trump • 42 words • 100.0% coverageDonald Trump • 45 words • 0.0% coverageDonald Trump • 18 words • 0.0% coverageThe White House • 21 words • 100.0% coverageThe White House • 21 words • 100.0% coverageThe White House • 21 words • 0.0% coverageThe New York Times • 18 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 44 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 31 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 48 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 26 words • 0.0% coverage
Selected voice

Donald Trump

100%flagged-word coverage
153 attributed words65% of attributed speech99% writer coverage
0%22.5%45.0%Unattributed Quote+41.8 ptsWriter: 0.0%Donald Trump: 41.8%41.8%Quote-first Misdirection-28.7 ptsWriter: 28.7%Donald Trump: 0.0%0.0%Biased Writer Voice-14.9 ptsWriter: 14.9%Donald Trump: 0.0%0.0%

Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.

Loading…
Loading…
Loading…

Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.