Donald Trump once again failed to provide evidence to support his claims that he won the 2020 election or to prove any election rigging, but the president’s primetime address has sparked concerns that he is launching a sinister plot ahead of the midterms.
After Trump, 80, delivered his rambling 25-minute speech on Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer issued a dire warning that the president was attempting to lay the groundwork to rig the 2026 election, and he was not alone in his prediction.
“Let’s be clear—in America, voters choose their leaders, not the other way around. Democrats will fight like hell to make sure every American voter can cast their ballot freely, without obstruction or interference from Donald Trump‚" Schumer said while blasting Trump’s push for his voting legislation.
Fellow New Yorker, Governor Kathy Hochul, had a similar take ahead of November as Democrats look to flip the House and Senate while Trump’s approval remains at record lows.
“From years of election denial to tonight’s baseless lies, Donald Trump can see the writing on the wall,” she wrote. “When he fears losing, he lays the groundwork to blame the election. The excuses have already begun.”
“This is all just a prelude to interfere in our midterms—don’t fall for it," said Sen. Mark Warner, ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Warner pointed out that the purported evidence raised by Trump had already been examined by the Senate Intelligence Committee, and it was agreed on a bipartisan basis that foreign governments did not change any 2020 votes.
In his speech on Thursday, even Trump stopped short of arguing the documents released by his administration proved the 2020 election was stolen. He instead declared “our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen.”
But Obama’s former chief strategist David Axelrod argued that the president’s goal is not to make elections more secure.
“It was to continue to raise false claims and foment unwarranted doubts—all to justify his own tampering in midterm elections that currently look very bleak for his party,” Axelrod wrote on X.
While Trump has been railing about election security since the start of his second term, his administration has cut more than a third of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which is tasked with protecting critical infrastructure, including elections.
California Sen. Adam Schiff also warned the speech was not only a “renewed attempt to inject fear and cloud reality ahead of the next election in November” but also to “provide pretext for seizing voter data, and discrediting and interfering with election results.”
Rep. Jim Himes, ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, took the warning a step further on MS NOW, warning that Trump would deploy federal officers from DHS to states to seize ballot boxes. He said if ballot boxes are seized and the chain of custody is broken, “American democracy dies.”
While Democrats sounded the alarms, Republican members of Congress remained largely quiet about the president’s address.
It comes after Politico reported one former administration official said the people he spoke to were “scared s--tless” ahead of Trump’s address over what he might say.
While Democrats were quick to slam the president’s remarks and his continued push for the SAVE America Act, GOP congressional leaders, including Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, did not acknowledge it at all.
While GOP leadership did not weigh in, some rank-and-file MAGA Republican members promoted Trump’s words as they pushed for the president’s voting legislation. But the bill remains dead on arrival in the Senate, and the president’s scattered primetime pitch did not appear to change the status quo.
While the speech did not move the needle, Trump congratulated himself for it in a post early Friday, writing, “Great reviews on speech last night. Big audience.”
