In a much-hyped speech last night, President Trump made several claims about election integrity in the United States being compromised. In some ways the speech did not live up to the hype because we already knew the U.S. election system is insecure. However, he also released documents showing that intelligence officials tried to hide information about voter fraud from him.

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First the president accused China of trying to steal the U.S. election. He said:

[O]ver 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. That information includes names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences and other sensitive data that would be needed to register to vote and engage in other nefarious activities, which is exactly what was happening. This data loss presents an unprecedented election security nightmare.

That’s true. But the data is also commercially available in most states. Given what we know about China’s efforts to spy on and hack the U.S., it would surprising if it had not bought that kind of data.

About 278,000 non-citizens are registered to vote in U.S. elections, President Trump said. Another major concern—but also something that’s not a surprise when states make it so easy for people to vote without ID.

The biggest story is probably the efforts from U.S. intelligence services to cover this up.

Reasonable people will disagree about the credibility or importance of a piece of intelligence. These agencies cannot pass absolutely everything on to the president; it would be a fire hose of data. They need to filter out the unreliable or unimportant.

That’s not what happened here. Consider the following internal communications revealed yesterday:

• One e-mail read, “We have deliberately massaged our one pending [Presidential Daily Briefing] to avoid any direct links to the election. The massive report we have been waiting on has been chopped up into 13 reports …. Many/all of them will be cross-posted … or downgraded ….”
• Another e-mail criticized that decision, saying it “is a highly irregular way to do things.” Yet the “massaging” proceeded.
• “i’m [sic] basically running a shadow government across the fbi at this point,” read a text message from Nikki Floris, deputy assistant director of the fbi’s counterintelligence branch (2018–2022). Floris played a major role in labeling any reports critical of the Biden family as Russian disinformation.

Other published internal reports showed intelligence agencies believed that voting infrastructure—such as voting machines—was vulnerable, but “it probably would be difficult to coordinate a campaign to alter voting results on a wide scale.” That’s hardly the ringing endorsement for U.S. election security that we’ve heard since 2020.

America was under attack from within, and many of those internal enemies are still in place. God miraculously allowed President Trump to return to office. But the declassified documents are a reminder of how powerful those internal enemies became.

It is crucial to understand that attack from within. It is a warning to Americans that they must repent toward God to survive enemies from without and within. Read more of that warning in our free book America Under Attack.

The U.S. Is Losing Latin America

The United States will impose 25 percent tariffs on most Brazilian imports, effective later this month, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office announced Wednesday. Once the new tariffs take effect, Brazil will become one of the most heavily tariffed major U.S. trade partners after China.

• This marks the first major move in the Trump administration’s tariff strategy since the Supreme Court’s ruling against its prior broad impositions. With the International Emergency Economic Powers Act now off the table for unilateral tariffs, the administration is invoking Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.

Brazil’s trade practices are unreasonable, the U.S. government is arguing—spanning anti-corruption enforcement, digital trade, electronic payment services, ethanol market access, illegal deforestation, intellectual property protection and preferential tariffs.

• The new tariffs will apply to Brazilian imports including agricultural machinery, clothing, electrical machinery, paper, sugar and steel.
• Certain exports in demand in the U.S. will be exempt, including aircraft parts, beef, coffee, energy products, organic honey, pig iron and rare earths.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called the move a “lamentable milestone” in bilateral ties and accused the Trump administration of collaborating with the family of former President Jair Bolsonaro against his government.

Meanwhile, the European Union is offering Brazil a “more beneficial” partnership on critical minerals than the U.S. or China.

• The EU signed a trade deal with Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) on January 17, which is being implemented provisionally and aims to create one of the world’s largest free-trade zones, covering a market of over 700 million people.
• The European Council also adopted the decision to formally conclude the Interim Agreement on Trade between the EU and Mexico on Tuesday, opening the door for closer EU-Mexico relations.

Bible prophecies describe America being economically besieged by foreign enemies (Deuteronomy 28; Isaiah 23; Ezekiel 27). America cannot be besieged unless Latin America and its maritime choke points are out of its control. That is why the late Herbert W. Armstrong forecast that the alliance between Europe and Latin America would strengthen. For more information on why God is allowing this to happen, read “Germany Unites the World Against America,” by Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry.

France and Germany’s Growing Nuclear Collaboration

Two French Rafale fighter jets capable of carrying nuclear weapons joined two German Eurofighters yesterday in a mid-air refueling exercise at Nörvenich Air Base near Cologne. It is their first practical step toward joint nuclear deterrence.

• A French nuclear exercise is planned later this year to include German military personnel.

Adding nukes to European unity: A Franco-German defense and security council convenes today. French President Emmanuel Macron said yesterday that the meeting adds a “new dynamic” to the creation of a “powerful Europe which unites our strengths.”

• But what France sees as greater security leaves a dangerous open door for Germany.

“France under Macron is wholeheartedly supporting a European military with nuclear weapons. But little does France know to what end Germany plans to use this power!” Gerald Flurry warned in “France’s Deadly Ignorance About Germany.”

Bible prophecy is clear about the danger France is overlooking. A nuclear-armed Germany, leading a European empire that includes France, will play a major role in catastrophic end-time events.

Germany’s Moral Rot Exposed

Recent incidents highlight the moral rot within Germany—a trend with troubling historical and prophetic implications.

1) Neo-Nazi Sven Liebich, a man who dresses like a woman and goes by the name Marla Svenja, was transferred by German officials to a women’s prison in Chemnitz earlier this week.

Two days later, on July 16, Taggesschau reported that the women’s prison rejected him, writing that “the administration of the Chemnitz Correctional Facility decided that the convicted right-wing extremist could not remain in their custody, so she was transferred to a men’s prison.”

• Liebich only changed his legal gender after being sentenced to prison last year. He is blatantly, intentionally mocking the system; his critics argue that the gender change is a provocation or an abuse of the law. Still, the media continue to refer to him as “her.”

In sum: A neo-Nazi man in a dress is obviously exploiting a system that prioritizes “transgender rights,” being rejected by a women’s prison—and still, journalists unironically refer to him as “she.”

2) “Jens Spahn and his husband have become parents,” Spiegel Online reported yesterday. Spahn is one of Germany’s top “conservative” politicians.

• Of course, a homosexual couple can’t produce children, and surrogacy is illegal in Germany. The mother is from the U.S., and Spahn’s homosexual partner is reportedly the father genetically.
• “As a gay man and a Christian, I personally find it very difficult to come to terms with the idea of a ‘rented womb,’” Spahn wrote in 2015. But now he is being criticized for having “rented” a womb.

3) Germany’s far-right party Alternative für Deutschland is campaigning in Saxony-Anhalt with the words: “Only from the union of a man and a woman do children—and thus future generations—come into being.”

• Well and good—yet party chief Alice Weidel lives with her lesbian partner and two “sons” in Switzerland. Asked about it, she said: “If you ask me personally: My children have the best upbringing and the best opportunities.”

German moral decay should alarm us all. The history of the Weimar Republic shows how moral decay and political instability go hand in hand.

• A morally sick society paved the way for the rise of Adolf Hitler. The society made his team of “[m]urderers, pimps, homosexuals, perverts, drug addicts or just plain rowdies,” as The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich described it, look good and made his message appealing.

The sins of our world and the sins of the elite enable the rise of evil leaders.

• When “the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up,” Daniel 8:23 prophesies for the end time. This leader is also called a “vile person” in Daniel 11:21.

It takes a vile society for such a vile leader to rise.

IN OTHER NEWS

The United States continued its sixth consecutive day of strikes on Iran today with operations the U.S. Central Command (centcom) says involve 50,000 U.S. troops throughout the Middle East. Iran claims the attacks hit several bridges and an airport. centcom announced yesterday it boarded the ship M/T Wen Yao in the Gulf of Oman. Iran retaliated today by attacking U.S. positions in Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain and possibly Oman and Syria.

China overtakes U.S. in global favorability: China now enjoys a more favorable public image around the world than the United States, according to a Pew survey published Wednesday. The poll of 42,151 people in 36 countries shows that America’s global reputation has suffered during President Donald Trump’s “America First” era, while perceptions of China have become more positive. The survey also shows more people “have more confidence” in President Xi Jinping than President Trump.