In primetime speech, Trump doesn’t provide evidence for illegal voting

President Trump speaks at an event Wednesday in Carlisle, Pa.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Alex Wong/Getty Images

President Trump, who for years has sowed doubt about the security of American elections, is scheduled to give a primetime address Thursday night on election integrity.

The remarks come as his war in Iran approaches the five-month mark, some Republican lawmakers want him to focus on the economy, and as his approval rating remains near second-term lows.

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Trump and his advisers have so far refused to detail what will be in the speech, though White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested at Thursday’s press briefing that he would be presenting what she called “findings” about election integrity.

“It will shock you if you have an honest eye listening to the president tonight and everything he is saying will be backed by facts and by evidence that will be provided this evening,” she said.

Trump has long contended, without evidence, that he won the 2020 election — a lie that still comes up often in his speeches and social media posts. Numerous reviews have debunked his claims about that election.

In addition, a federal intelligence report released in March 2021 concluded: “We have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results.”

This report was a declassified version of a report that was provided to Trump and other officials on Jan. 7, 2021.

Trump has spent much of his second term attempting to shape elections and voting policy in unprecedented ways.

Leavitt also said Thursday that Trump would talk about the SAVE America Act, which would among other things require Americans to present proof of citizenship when registering to vote and a form of ID when voting. Opponents point to evidence that voter fraud is extremely rare and that some citizens do not readily have access to these documents. Trump has been pushing Congress for months to pass that legislation, which has stalled in the Senate.

Ahead of the speech, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he thinks it is part of an attempt to delegitimize the upcoming midterms.

“Trump’s primetime speech tonight isn’t simply about relitigating his overwhelming defeat in the 2020 election; it’s about undermining the 2026 election before a single vote has been cast,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Thursday. “Trump won’t expose anything of substance about 2020 — he’ll just echo the same stale, baseless, pathetic lies he’s repeated for six years.”

When asked by a reporter whether Trump would accept the results of this November’s elections, Leavitt did not directly answer, instead insisting that reporters should tune into the speech.

Presidential primetime addresses are relatively rare and often happen around major events. For example, earlier this term, Trump gave a primetime address to inform the nation about strikes on Iran in June 2025.

However, he has also given speeches that haven’t been tied to breaking news. Trump’s last primetime address came in April, when he updated the nation on the then-one-month-old war with Iran.

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