Trump says prime-time address will focus on 'free and fair elections'

Trump says prime-time address will focus on 'free and fair elections'.

President Donald Trump said he will discuss "free and fair elections" in his prime-time address to the nation on Thursday, July 16, signaling that he could use the speech to revive grievances over the 2020 election and push for long-stalled legislation to overhaul voting in federal elections.

"I'd rather save it, but it's really big news," Trump told reporters on July 14 in the Oval Office. "It's really, really big news, and our country has to shape up. That's what we're going to be talking about Thursday. It doesn't get bigger because without free and fair elections, you don't have a country." "We'll be discussing other things, too, but it will be a very big announcement," he added.

Numerous courts, election audits and even Trump's own election specialists in the Justice and Homeland Security departments found no evidence of such voting-machine tampering, foreign interference or widespread fraud.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told USA TODAY on July 14 that he expects Trump to once again make long-debunked claims. "This has been looked into countless times, and my fear is that either a single piece of intelligence or some dissenting view is going to be taken and magnified on national television and then used as an excuse for Lord knows what," Warner said. "This is a president that's not had a lot of national addresses, and if he's going to do a nationwide TV address on the subject, I think we all should be worried."