Trump to give national address with election focus
U.S. President Donald Trump addresses the nation from the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on July 16, 2026.
Saul Loeb | via Reuters
President Donald Trump will address allegations of threats to the integrity of US elections in his first address to the nation at 21:00 on Thursday.
This was hardly the first time he’d done this. Trump has repeatedly claimed that he was the victim of a “rigged” and “stolen” election since his loss to former President Joe Biden nearly six years ago, and has made similar claims about more recent elections that Republicans lost.
Trump’s decision to pay attention to his own election dovetails with a multi-level effort by the president and his allies to reshape the US election ahead of the November midterm elections. Polls show that Democrats are in favor of taking back the US House of Representatives, amid Trump’s declining popularity.
Trump is expected to repeat his baseless claims about the 2020 presidential results, while administration officials have alleged that foreign rivals, including China, are engaging in operations to influence the election. MS said NOW.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that news outlets “misreported” what Trump’s speech would include. But he hinted that Trump would make claims about US election security.
“The President is going to make a very important statement in terms of the integrity of our elections,” he told reporters at the White House.
“We have to have the safest and most secure elections in the history of the world. What the president is going to talk about tonight will show you that maybe that’s not the case and we need to make some adjustments going forward,” he said.
Leavitt noted that Trump could also touch on a number of other issues, including Iran and the economy.
Trump remained silent on the details of the speech, delivering his first official speech since early April when he claimed the ongoing Iran war was almost over.
But he repeatedly suggested that his remarks Thursday night would focus on his concerns about the U.S. election and his plans to change them.
“This is really big news and our country needs to recover,” Trump said when asked about the speech at the White House on Tuesday. “You can’t have a country without free and fair elections.”
It was asked somehow Monday night interview See a preview of the speech on Newsmax Trump blasted last month’s Los Angeles mayoral primary as an example of a “rigged” race.
Trump made false claims mass vote fraud he had officially lost the race, even before his preferred candidate, former reality TV star Spencer Pratt.
“Our elections are skewed and we have to fix them,” Trump told Newsmax.
Trump insists the way to do this is for Congress to pass the “SAVE America Act,” the controversial bill that aims to crack down on noncitizens meddling in U.S. elections by requiring photo ID to vote and proof of citizenship to register, among other provisions. Opponents say the measure would disenfranchise voters, especially those with low incomes or ethnic backgrounds.
Federal law already requires citizenship to vote in U.S. elections, and data shows a lot a few examples where votes are cast by non-citizens.
But Trump has made election law his top priority ahead of the next election. He even refused to enact other legislation until the SAVE America Act reached his desk. And his allies in the House of Representatives have stalled other measures to block access to the president as they push to pass election legislation that lacks the votes to clear Congress.
Trump’s Republican Party is trying to maintain its majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate after the midterm elections, but it faces major challenges. The party that holds the White House has historically underperformed in midterm elections, and Democrats aim to capitalize on that. surveys showed Americans have negative views of the economy, the Iran war, and Trump.
Trump’s election efforts
People vote during the primary elections at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, USA, on June 23, 2026.
Eduardo Muñoz | Reuters
Trump has sought to challenge election results he opposes, using every tool at his disposal.
Trump and his allies filed dozens of lawsuits challenging states’ calculations after his 2020 election loss, but none of the results were overturned and no credible evidence of election fraud was presented.
Efforts to overturn the 2020 result culminated in the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the headquarters of the US government and forced lawmakers to temporarily flee their chambers for security reasons. Trump later pardoned or commuted the sentences of nearly all defendants involved in the riot.
In late January, an election office in Georgia, a prime target of Trump’s attempts to disrupt the 2020 race, was raided by the FBI. Records related to the 2020 elections. Trump’s then-Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was also seen in this raid.
After Gabbard announced her resignation in May, Trump chose federal housing regulator Bill Pulte as her replacement.
Pulte, who has gained a reputation as a loyal attack dog for Trump, is expected to join the president in the speech, MS NOW previously reported.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department has filed lawsuits in multiple states seeking to obtain detailed voter registration data. The DOJ argued that it needed the information to ensure compliance with federal election laws. There have been more than a dozen such cases dismissed by federal judges so far.
