WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump used a primetime address to question the legitimacy of U.S. elections and push for more restrictive voting laws. The speech came as he’s escalated his calls for Republicans to pass tighter federal voting rules ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Kansas U.S. Senator Roger on his social media page wrote, "Election integrity is the heartbeat of our constitutional republic. Americans must have confidence in our elections."
"We must pass voter ID, require proof of citizenship, and strengthen guardrails around mail-in ballots. That’s why it’s critical that we pass the SAVE America Act."
Meanwhile, former Vice President Kamala Harris wrote on social media,
Trump began Thursday night with a stark warning about what he described as flaws in the voting system and said he was releasing previously classified documents related to the 2020 and 2018 elections, when he lost the presidential election and when his party suffered losses.
Trump’s speech presented allegations of interference and influence in ways that lacked key context and did not produce evidence that votes had been manipulated or that the election outcome had been altered.
Notably, Trump focused on China but glossed over Russia, a country that intelligence officials have said favored Trump in 2016 and 2020 and engaged in wide-ranging influence campaigns aimed at boosting him over Democrat Joe Biden in the latter campaign.
Despite focusing on China in his speech, Trump did not criticize or issue a warning to Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom he has long praised.
Election security experts say America’s decentralized voting system, with the power over elections residing with the states instead of the federal government, is a strength. Americans vote in more than 10,000 different jurisdictions with different rules, making the nations’ elections extraordinarily complicated but safe from widespread fraud.
No credible intelligence has emerged showing that the vote count in 2020 was manipulated by foreign actors. Repeated audits and reviews -- manyrun by Republicans, including Trump’s own then-attorney general -- have found no significant fraud occurred in 2020.
Even if substantiated, Trump’s claims did not amount to conduct that would have altered the outcome of any race, let alone the 2020 race for the White House.
He also did not raise doubts about his election wins in 2016 or 2024.
As Trump spoke, the White House unveiled a website containing documents that were presented without context and included selectively released pieces of investigation files, intelligence analysis and correspondence.
Some networks did not air it live
In past presidencies, primetime addresses have typically been reserved for major milestones or nationally significant events.
Trump last spoke to the nation in April, giving an address on the Iran war a month after it started. He said then that the U.S. would accomplish its objectives “very shortly” and that “the hard part is done, so it should be easy.” The war, however, has dragged on and strikes between the U.S. and Iran have intensified this week.
Trump also delivered a politically charged primetime speech in December in which he sought to blame the challenging economic climate on Democrats.
ABC, NBC and CNN did not air Thursday's remarks live but carried them in full on their streaming services.
CBS and MS NOW both cut away from Trump’s speech before he finished, while Fox News continued to carry his address.
Trump called out the media outlets for not carrying it live, accused them of being “part of a plot" and suggested their broadcast licenses be revoked.
Networks typically — but not always — carry presidential addresses to the nation live. In 2022, when Biden delivered a primetime address full of warnings about Trump and his adherents’ “extreme ideology,” the networks did not carry it live.
In 2014, the major networks chose to stick with their primetime programming instead of airing an address by President Barack Obama on his plans for immigration reform.
Democrats accuse Trump of seeking to discredit next election
Democrats warned that Trump was trying to revive false claims of past stolen elections in order to delegitimize the 2026 midterm elections, in which Trump’s Republican Party is facing headwinds.
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia called Trump’s claims “totally bogus.”
“The fact is our intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that China did not even try to change a single vote in the 2020 election,” Warner said in a statement on X. “A single concurring opinion suggested China may have tried to sway voters’ opinions … but that’s been public knowledge since 2021."
Rep. Joseph Morelle of New York, the ranking Democrat on the administration committee that handles federal voting issues and elections, said Trump is trying to sow confusion before the midterm elections.
“This is a pretext for the president, I think, calling into dispute the 2026 elections,” Morelle said on C-SPAN, adding that “we have secure elections.”
“I heard no concrete allegations that foreign actors actually changed the results of an American election,” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware said on CNN.
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