Transcript: Sen. Mark Warner on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," July 19, 2026

MARGARET BRENNAN: The president, as you know, declassified intelligence this past week. He argues there's vulnerabilities in infrastructure. It has been public for years that the intelligence community assessed China tried to influence the U.S. election, basically change what people think, not necessarily hack their ballots, so to speak. Listen to what he said here, though.

DONALD TRUMP: This evidence shows that the election system we have dangerously exposes- and really exposes like levels never thought possible, to hacking, exploitation and foreign interference.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Has your committee been given evidence to back up those claims that suggest a direct ability to interfere?

SEN. WARNER: No, absolutely not. And matter of fact, here is the- there are so many absurdities and falsehoods in Trump's Thursday night speech, and I'm glad that most media treated it not as serious news. And I know some folks at your network- the journalists, I have huge respect for. I was disappointed that your senior management made the decision to cover it as news. There's so many falsehoods where do you begin? You know, the only election that Trump is concerned about is 2020. That was the election that his administration was in charge of. Matter of fact, the director of national intelligence, Mr. Ratcliffe was DNI then. He's CIA director now. If there was mistakes made, why is he CIA director? You know, he goes through this focus on China when he forgets or just omits the biggest country that tries to influence on every election is Russia. We've documented that time and again, and the complete conclusion of the intelligence community, 18 different agencies, said yes. Folks tried to influence, didn't mean they changed any vote, and they sure didn't interfere in the machinery.

SEN. WARNER: There's no explanation. And if Donald Trump is suddenly interested in election security, why is he taking the cybersecurity agency, which did on a voluntary basis- Chris Krebs did a great job on that years earlier as a Trump appointee, and they've basically completely downsized it. Why have they taken the voluntary programs like ERIC, where you know if you move from one state to another, making sure that dead people don't vote or people who have- have- try to vote in two states, they've dismantled that. The Election Assistance Commission, not very well known, but this is the group that works with individual registrars in states, making sure their voting machines are safe. They- Trump recently fired the Democrats and made the Republican quit. Why is he doing all these things? I believe it's because Donald Trump intends to interfere in this year's elections. He knows if there is a free and fair election, his policies will be rejected at record levels.

MARGARET BRENNAN: What do you mean, interfere?

SEN. WARNER: Whether that takes- I think that what we just saw was this was the opening shot, the opening shot of trying to undermine Americans' confidence that their vote will be actually counted and mean something. I fear as well that if he tries to pull something that could potentially- he's not ruled out bringing ICE to the polls. He's not even ruled out the idea of trying to bar certain voting machines.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, we're going to talk about what is U.S. law in terms of presence and how those election facilities are going to be run with our two experts next. Senator Warner, thank you for your time.