Trump's Speech on Thursday Will Relitigate the 2020 Presidential Election, and No One Should Fall for It
He just can't let go of his loss in 2020
On Monday, Trump announced that he would address the nation on Thursday evening. He didn’t say what topic or topics he would discuss. The logical expectation would be the resumption of strikes against Iran. Alas, we quickly learned from reporting that he plans to discuss the 2020 election. The speculation is that this will involve newly declassified information about foreign interference and alleged vulnerabilities of voting machines.
Now, Trump’s claims about the 2020 election haven’t amounted to anything. There were 62 lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign and its allies in the two months after the election.1 Only one of those lawsuits amounted to anything, and that was a minor procedural issue. 2Of course, voting machines were famously attacked by Sidney Powell and her ilk. Dominion Voting Systems sued Powell for defamation, and she settled out of court. Hilariously, Powell, in a motion to dismiss Dominion’s lawsuit, said, “[N]o reasonable person would conclude that the statements [she made] were truly statements of fact.”3 Separately, Fox News, which aired segments about voting machines, settled with Dominion for $787.5 million.
Since returning to power in January 2025, Trump and his administration have used the levers of government to relitigate the 2020 election. Former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard did this by releasing declassified information that she claimed showed that the Obama administration “manufactured and politicized intelligence.” The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s bipartisan report, the investigation conducted by former FBI Director Robert Mueller, and the Intelligence Community all came to the conclusion that Russia sought to influence the 2016 election. No one could definitively establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.
We also know that Russia accessed some state voter registration systems and voter databases ahead of the 2016 election, but there’s no evidence that any data were manipulated. Iran appears to have tried to influence the election in 2020 against Trump. That doesn’t mean there weren’t other countries on the radar for their capabilities,4 but we know about Russia and Iran. Regardless of the attempts to influence the 2016 and 2020 elections, there’s no evidence that actual vote tabulation systems and/or vote counts were manipulated or altered. There’s no evidence that voting machines were hacked in an actual election to tamper with votes.5
Just to be clear, I’m going to be precise about what foreign adversaries did and didn’t accomplish, because the two get deliberately conflated. Computer network intrusions and attempts to influence an election – through propaganda, social media operations, and hack-and-leak ops—and actually manipulating an election are different things. There’s just no evidence that any voter data were altered or deleted, and no evidence that any vote tabulation system or vote count was manipulated. Not in 2016, 2020, or since. That is the conclusion of every public investigation, including the intelligence community’s own post-election assessments. But the thing about foreign influence and sabotage operations is that they have the best shot of success when Americans stop trusting our elections. Our foreign adversaries don’t need to sabotage our voting machines or demoralize American voters if we do that on our own.
You don’t have to like the outcome of the election to accept the fact that Trump won in 2016 and lost in 2020. What this address to the nation appears to be about is sowing more division and casting more doubt on elections in the United States. Trump can’t accept that his approval rating is underwater because a) he’s not focusing on key economic issues that Americans care about, b) he started a war with Iran that drove up oil and gas prices, and c) he seems to be more concerned about vanity projects in the District of Columbia than anything else. Look, the outcome of the election is anything but certain. There’s still plenty of game left to play. That said, it looks like Republicans will lose the House and maybe a couple of seats in the Senate. If that happens, it’ll be because voters will reject Trump and because congressional Republicans have done very little to push back on his worst tendencies.
There’s another concern, which is that Trump may be setting up the possible national emergency around elections that Cleta Mitchell mentioned last year. Essentially, this means that the Trump administration will try to federalize elections. Of course, the Executive Branch doesn’t have much of a constitutional role in elections. In fact, any federal role falls to Congress under Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution for congressional races and Article II for presidential electors.
Still, Trump will try to push the limits of his power, as he has so often done since January 2025. His executive orders on elections are such examples, particularly his March 2026 executive order that has led to a U.S. Postal Service rule that proposes prohibiting the delivery of mail ballots to voters in a state that hasn’t turned over its voter data. He also recently forced out the three remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC).
Created by the Help America Vote Act of 2002, the EAC has several responsibilities, including administering federal election grants, providing technical guidance and best practices to state and local election officials, and collecting data on election administration. Although it does not administer elections, the EAC also oversees the federal testing and certification program for voting systems, ensuring that voting equipment meets voluntary federal standards before states decide whether to use it. EAC commissioners could also serve as credible, trusted voices on the integrity of our election systems—validators who were conveniently ousted right before the speech and the ensuing chaos.
Simply put, continuing to cast doubt on elections is dangerous for the American experiment and the future of the Republic. We’re already so bitterly divided, and Trump, desperate to keep his stranglehold on Congress, may just be about to throw a stick of dynamite on the pyre.
See p. 17 of the PDF.
The case was Donald J. Trump for President v. Boockvar. It played out in Pennsylvania courts. The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee challenged guidance issued by Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar that extended the statutory deadline for certain first-time mail voters to provide proof of identification, arguing that she lacked the authority to change a deadline set by the legislature. The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court agreed, holding that the guidance exceeded the Secretary’s statutory authority and ordering counties not to count ballots that relied on the unauthorized extension.
Supposedly, Trump will make claims about China in his address.
Voting machines, like other computer systems, have demonstrated security vulnerabilities in controlled testing. Researchers from Princeton University, the University of Michigan, and the DEF CON Voting Village have shown that certain voting systems can be compromised under specific conditions, particularly with physical access. Those demonstrations, however, are distinct from evidence of actual election interference. To date, no public investigation has concluded that voting machines were successfully hacked to alter the outcome of a presidential election, including the 2016 or 2020 presidential elections.
If a tree falls in a remote forest, and no media network covers it, does it make any noise at all?