Trump to deliver primetime election speech amid voting fraud claims

President Donald Trump planned a primetime address for Thursday at 9 p.m. ET, with the White House saying he would focus on elections and newly declassified intelligence tied to U.S. voting systems. The speech comes about four months before the November midterm elections, as Republicans try to hold Congress and Trump presses for tighter federal election rules.

In the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump told reporters he had “really big news,” said, “It doesn’t get bigger, because without free and fair elections, you don’t have a country,” and added that he wanted to “save it” for Thursday because it would be “a very big announcement.” The comments pointed toward another public push to relitigate the 2020 race he lost to Joe Biden.

An administration official told Reuters that the address would center on newly declassified intelligence about investigations into U.S. elections and what the White House describes as voting machine vulnerabilities. Some reports say Trump may claim the material shows foreign interference in the 2020 contest, a charge that would put fresh fuel behind a line of attack he has kept alive for years.

Trump has repeatedly promoted election-fraud claims, including a recent allegation involving the Los Angeles mayoral primary. Federal prosecutors opened fraud investigations after he drew attention to that claim, underscoring how his rhetoric can spill from political grievance into law enforcement scrutiny. AP also noted that Trump used a primetime speech in December to blame Democrats for the economic climate.

The coming address fits a pattern that stretches back to 2016, when Trump refused to say whether he would accept defeat to Hillary Clinton. Now he is preparing to use another national platform to talk about elections at a moment when mail ballots, counting rules and state procedures are already shaping up as major fault lines in the midterm campaign.