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In their book Regime Change<\/em><\/a>, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan offer a telling account of the way President Donald Trump deals with a bad news cycle this term: As the White House debated how to manage the fallout from its chaotic slashing of the federal government last year, they determined that they needed \u201cdistractions.\u201d There were two proposals: they could release videos of Special Counsel Robert Hur\u2019s interview with a confused Joe Biden<\/a>. Or they could announce the grand opening of camps in Guant\u00e1namo Bay to detain migrants.<\/p>\n \u201cThey opted for announcing Guant\u00e1namo,\u201d Haberman and Swan wrote. \u201cThere was no better counter for a screwup than an outrage.\u201d<\/p>\n Thursday night, Trump dipped back into the formula. With his approval rating stalled at record lows, the war with Iran<\/a> escalating and the cost of living continuing to weigh on voters, he used a 24-minute address from the White House\u2019s East Room to revive his favorite political grievance: the 2020 election he lost.<\/p>\n Trump spent the opening minutes ticking through his administration\u2019s claimed accomplishments. \u201cWe are doing great,\u201d he said, sounding hoarse. Then, after a deep exhale, sounding as though he were about to leap from a diving board, Trump announced the release of declassified intelligence that he said exposes \u201cshocking vulnerabilities\u201d in American elections.<\/p>\n His most dramatic claim was that China had obtained voter-registration information concerning roughly 220 million Americans. If accurate, it would be a serious data-security breach. It would not, however, establish that China changed a vote, manipulated a voting machine, or altered the result of the 2020 election. Nothing in the declassified material appears to support such a conclusion.<\/p>\n