Trump will speak on elections in primetime address after pushing debunked conspiracies

Canadian Defence and Security Network director Stephen Saideman weighs in on how Trump has handled dealings with Iran so far.

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump will deliver a primetime address this week that he says will include a focus on elections, suggesting he could revisit long-debunked conspiracy theories about his 2020 defeat to Democrat Joe Biden. The speech comes as he’s escalated calls for Republicans to pass tighter federal voting rules for November’s midterm elections.

The Republican president has been guarded about what he plans to say in the 9 p.m. Thursday speech, scheduled as he confronts a collapsing deal to end the war with Iran. He also faces numerous domestic issues, including recent deadly shootings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Asked for a preview of the speech on Tuesday, Trump offered scant detail but said he has “really big news.”

“It doesn’t get bigger, because without free and fair elections, you don’t have a country,” Trump said in the Oval Office. He refused to go further, saying he wanted to “save it” for the moment, though he also hinted he would be talking about a hodgepodge of issues.

“We’ll be discussing other things, too,” Trump said, without elaborating. “It’s going to be a very big announcement.”

Trump has used the power of the primetime presidential address — typically reserved for milestones — to deliver politically charged speeches before, including one in December when he sought to blame the challenging economic climate on Democrats. But Thursday’s address seems poised to go even further, using the moment to amplify election lies before an audience of millions in an effort to boost Republican prospects before midterms that threaten to hobble Trump for the remainder of his term.

On Monday, when asked about the speech, Trump repeated baseless claims of voter fraud in the Los Angeles primary race for mayor. During the interview with conservative outlet Newsmax, Trump said Republican Spencer Pratt lost his primary bid because of fraud, citing in part California’s slow vote count.

Federal prosecutors said they were opening fraud investigations in the state last month after Trump drew attention to the claim.

The president’s preoccupation with voting fraud and election security dates back at least to 2016, when he refused to say whether he would accept defeat to Democrat Hillary Clinton. After he won, he convened a voting integrity commission to support his claims that widespread voter fraud cost him the popular vote, though the commission disbanded without uncovering any such evidence.

Four years later, after he lost the 2020 election to Biden, Trump again claimed cheating and zeroed in on the Democrat’s narrow win in Georgia. Trump called the state’s secretary of state and pressured him to “find 11,780 votes,” just enough votes to overturn Biden’s victory in the state. He, along with than a dozen allies, was indicted in the state though the charges were later dropped.

Repeated audits and reviews -- manyrun by Republicans, including Trump’s own then-attorney general -- have found no significant fraud occurred in 2020.

Before winning in 2024, Trump was again laying the groundwork to claim cheating if he lost. After returning to office, he stocked his administration with officials who back his false claims of 2020 election fraud.

Trump made voting regulation central in this term

Frequently declaring that he won the White House “three times,” Trump has made voting regulation a core issue during his second term, demanding legislation that would require voter ID and sharply limit mail-in voting. Facing midterm races that will decide control of Capitol Hill, Trump has stirred new claims to cast doubt on election results that could challenge his power in Washington.

Earlier this year, FBI agents raided elections offices in Fulton County, Georgia, seizing materials from the 2020 election. Tulsi Gabbard, then Trump’s director of national intelligence, traveled to Atlanta to oversee the execution of the search warrant.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, campaigning in Georgia for Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff and governor’s candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms, smiled Tuesday when asked about Trump potentially rehashing the 2020 election in his national address.

He called it a strategy “for losers.”

“I think people are exhausted by having conversations about elections that happened six years ago, that we have the answer to,” Moore said. “He continues to bring this up because he cannot get out of his mind that he actually could have lost.”

Beyond Georgia, Trump has widely taken aim at states that allow voters to submit ballots by mail. Trump said he called a U.S. attorney in California and demanded scrutiny of the governor’s primary last month as votes were being counted.

Last week, Trump ousted the remaining members of the federal Election Assistance Commission, a bipartisan panel that resisted his efforts to require would-be voters to document their U.S. citizenship before registering.

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Barrow reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writer Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.

Collin Binkley and Bill Barrow, The Associated Press