After 6 years, Trump brings his election obsession to primetime

After 6 years, Trump brings his election obsession to primetime

U.S. president expected to address nation Thursday night

U.S. President Donald Trump is set to address the nation on Thursday night on topics he said will include elections and voting machines, suggesting he is likely to revisit some of the unproven claims he has previously made about Republican losses, particularly his own in 2020.

Trump has offered only vague details about the address, scheduled for 9 p.m. ET, telling one reporter he has "really, really big news and our country has to shape up."

He added that "it doesn’t get bigger 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 after he lost to Joe Biden in 2020, the people that Trump appointed to run the Department of Justice, cybersecurity agencies and intelligence departments all said the same thing — the election was fair, legitimate and free of major fraud or foreign interference.

In his second term, Trump has tried to use the levers of power to rewrite that well-settled history, something that he's expected to try again on Thursday night with an address to the nation.

He has already appointed loyalists who have echoed his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and made clear he expects everyone to follow his lead.

In an indication of how fealty to Trump's lies has become a litmus test for his administration, many of his nominees have steadfastly refused to directly answer the question of who won in 2020, preferring to tersely note that Biden became president. Jay Clayton, Trump's nominee to become the next national intelligence director, was the latest to repeat that formula in his confirmation hearing on Wednesday.

"He had the most electoral votes," Clayton said of Biden. "He was declared the winner."

"And who has the most electoral votes? Is it the person who wins or the person who loses?" asked Sen. Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat.

"That's your characterization," Clayton responded. "I'm not going to continue to do this."

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The president has embraced baroque conspiracy theories about an international cabal that penetrated U.S. voting machines that have led to libel suits against his allies when they've repeated the claims.

Election experts fear Thursday's speech will bring another round of falsehoods.

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"There has been six-plus years of consistent findings from the intelligence community and from everyone who's looked at it that there was no foreign interference in 2020, and our voting systems were secure and accurate," said Victoria Bassetti of States United, a nonpartisan group supporting the state officials who run elections.

"I suppose the president could come up with some new assertion or new conclusion. It would fly in the face of all the evidence."