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US President Donald Trump will address the nation Thursday night on topics he said will include elections and voting machines, suggesting he may revisit some of the unsubstantiated allegations he has made in the past about Republican losses, especially his own in 2020.
Trump gave only vague details about the address, scheduled for 9 p.m. ET, he told one reporter “You have really big news and our country should stop it.”
He added that “it doesn’t matter because without free and fair elections, you don’t have a country.”
Despite Trump’s comments, the White House on Wednesday suggested that the content of the speech could change.
In the weeks following Joe Biden’s 2020 loss, Trump’s appointees to the Justice Department, cyber security agencies and intelligence agencies all said the same thing – the election was fair, legitimate and free of major corruption or foreign interference.
In his second term, Trump has tried to use power to rewrite that established history, something he is expected to try again Thursday night in his State of the Union speech.
He has already appointed loyal supporters of his false allegations that the 2020 election was rigged and made it clear that he expects everyone to follow his lead.
Showing that the sincerity of Trump’s lies has become a litmus test for his administration, many of his nominees have refused to directly answer the question of who won in 2020, preferring to note that Biden became president. Jay Clayton, Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, was the latest to repeat that formula at his confirmation hearing on Wednesday.
“He had a lot of electoral votes,” Clayton said of Biden. “You have been declared the winner.”
“And who has the most votes in the election? Is it the winner or the loser?” asked Sen. Mark Kelly, Arizona Democrat.
“That’s your character,” Clayton replied. “I will not continue to do this.”
Democrats have benefited from the new election of US President Donald Trump. Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche defended the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files, while National Intelligence Director Jay Clayton refused to concede that Trump had lost the 2020 election.
The president has embraced baroque conspiracy theories about an international cabal hacking US voting systems that has led him to contradict his allies when they repeat these allegations.
Election experts fear that Thursday’s speech will deliver another false joke.
“There have been six-plus years of consistent findings from the intelligence community and from everyone else watching that there was no foreign interference in 2020, and our voting systems were secure and accurate,” said Victoria Bassetti of United States United, a nonpartisan group that supports federal election officials.
“I think the president may come up with a new statement or a new conclusion. This can be seen in front of all the evidence.”
