Trump uses primetime address to the nation to once again raise doubts about past elections
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump used his primetime national address Thursday night to once again raise doubts about the results of past elections, reviving a subject he’s long used to make unproven claims and deny his loss in the 2020 election.
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.
He began 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 his party suffered losses.
No credible intelligence has emerged showing that the vote count in 2020 was manipulated by foreign actors. Repeated audits and reviews — many run by Republicans, including Trump’s own then-attorney general — have found no significant fraud occurred in 2020.
Sue Gordon, principal deputy director of national intelligence in Trump’s first term, called the president’s address “a dangerous speech about an incredibly important topic.” She said the intelligence community throughout Trump’s first term was alarmed about foreign interference in elections, but Trump scoffed at them, angered at the investigation of his campaign’s relationship with Russia.
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 Biden in the latter campaign.
