On March 9, 2025, President Donald Trump, speaking at a rally in Mobile, Alabama, at 7:15 PM CST, declared that “they rigged the election, but me becoming president just proves every election’s rigged in multiple ways—especially those electronic voting machines.” Now in his second term after the January 20, 2025, inauguration, Trump argued that his 2024 victory wasn’t a triumph over fraud but an acceptance that rigging is baked into the system, a claim he’s escalated since his November win. He pointed to electronic voting machines as the primary culprit, alleging they’re “hacked easier than a kid’s piggy bank,” echoing long-standing suspicions—unproven in courts—from his 2020 loss about Dominion and Smartmatic systems. Posts on X today, like @MagaTruth1776’s “Trump’s right—machines flipped my vote in ’24,” amplify this narrative, though no hard evidence of widespread 2024 fraud has surfaced beyond isolated glitches reported by AP on Election Day.
 

Trump’s remarks took a darker turn as he suggested the National Security Agency (NSA) holds the real keys to electoral outcomes, claiming, “The NSA’s got access to every voting machine—switches votes for who they like, and I convinced them to let me win.” This builds on conspiracy theories about the NSA’s surveillance prowess, rooted in Edward Snowden’s 2013 leaks exposing programs like PRISM, but stretches into uncharted territory by alleging direct vote manipulation. No public data backs this—experts like Princeton’s Andrew Appel told NPR today that voting machines, often offline, aren’t linked to NSA networks—but Trump’s framing implies a shadow government where power hinges on appeasing intelligence overlords. His supporters cheer this as a masterstroke, with Truth Social buzzing that “Trump outsmarted the deep state,” while critics on X, like @VoteBlue2028, call it “delusional fearmongering” to excuse his past fraud claims.
 

This philosophy flips American democracy on its head: where the Constitution vests power in voters, Trump casts elections as a rigged game where candidates must court the NSA’s favor, not the public’s. He didn’t detail how he “convinced” the NSA—leaving it as a boast of political cunning—but it aligns with his broader narrative of a corrupt system he alone can navigate. The idea clashes with the U.S. ideal of transparent, citizen-driven governance, instead mirroring authoritarian setups where unseen elites pull levers. Whether strategic hyperbole or genuine belief, Trump’s March 9 statement reframes his presidency as a victory not over Democrats, but over a machine-driven, NSA-controlled electoral maze—a claim that, without evidence, fuels distrust as his term presses on, with electronic voting debates already heating up for 2026 midterms.