5 things to watch for in Trump's primetime address on elections

Show Caption

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is set to deliver a primetime address to the nation July 16 that is expected to include allegations about voting security ‒ and perhaps foreign interference in elections ‒ less than four months before the November midterm elections.Trump has teased he plans to make "a very big announcement" on "free and fair elections" but said he will also discuss several other topics in the rare evening address, set for 9 p.m. ET.The speech comes as Trump is still pushing unsubstantiated allegations and debunked theories to assert that the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden was stolen, while alleging without evidence ahead of the midterms that Democrats only win by cheating.Here are five things to watch for in his remarks.New or recycled allegations about the 2020 election?Six years after the 2020 election, Trump remains fixated on his only election loss as a candidate. He falsely says with regularity that he's won three (not two) presidential elections, pushing baseless conspiracies to argue the 2020 election was "rigged" against him by Democrats.Yet the president often relies on theories that independent reviews long ago discredited.Numerous courts, election audits and even Trump’s own election specialists in the Justice and Homeland Security departments found no evidence of voting-machine tampering, foreign interference or widespread fraud in the 2020 election. Trump filed 62 lawsuits in court contesting the results in the weeks after the 2020 election, with each failing.Will Trump bring new information to light he hasn't discussed previously? Democrats and other Trump critics will quickly push back if he revives old allegations.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters ahead of the speech that Trump's allegations in the speech will "shock" Americans who "have an honest eye listening to the president tonight." She did not elaborate, but said everything Trump says will be "backed by facts and by evidence that will be provided this evening.""We should have the safest and most secure elections in the history of the world, and what the president will be speaking about tonight will show you that perhaps that is not the case," Leavitt said.Alleged foreign interference from China?Reports from Reuters and CBS News suggest Trump could use his remarks to allege foreign interference in the 2020 election by China.The White House has weighed Trump disclosing sensitive intelligence regarding China's ability to interfere with U.S. elections, Reuters reported, citing four people with knowledge of the discussions. Trump is also expected to cite information to support alleged vulnerabilities in voting infrastructure that could expose the U.S. to foreign interference in elections.Details of the intelligence related to China are not clear, but Reuters reported the classified information involves whether China had the intention and ability to disrupt U.S. elections in 2020.In 2021, the National Intelligence Council under Biden assessed with "high confidence" that China did not try to interfere with the 2020 U.S. election but considered ‒ though never deployed ‒ attempting to change the outcome of the election. In the end, China did not view either a Biden or Trump win as being advantageous enough to risk getting caught, according to the council's March 2021 report on foreign threats in the election.But the National Intelligence Officer for Cyber expressed a "minority view," detailed in the same report, that China took some steps to undermine Trump's reelection changes, primarily through social media and public statements.A separate intelligence report from 2020, declassified in 2022 but still heavily redacted, found that Chinese intelligence officials analyzed election voter registration data of multiple states to conduct public opinion analyses of the 2020 election, CBS reported.Will Trump zero in on Georgia?An ongoing FBI investigation into the 2020 election in Georgia ‒ which Biden narrowly won, along with the state's two Democratic U.S. senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock ‒ has fueled speculation Trump could center statements in the address on the outcome in Georgia.The FBI's investigation has focused on Fulton County, Georgia, a heavily Democratic county that includes parts of Atlanta. In January, the FBI seized 2020 ballots and other elections records from the Fulton County Elections Hub and Operations Center.Ossoff, who is up for reelection in November, said he expects Trump to use his address as a "pretext" to exert unconstitutional power over the midterm elections."There's talk that he might try to declare me and Raphael Warnock illegitimate senators," Ossoff said in a June 14 interview on MS NOW. "Obviously, the president has no power to do that, but he does have the power to try to intimidate people. He's demonstrated his will to abuse power."Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's former director of national intelligence who resigned in June, was present during the FBI's February search of the center. Trump replaced her on an interim basis with Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency who lacked any past experience in national intelligence.Trump told reporters in July he gave Pulte broad permission to declassify records, including those tied to the 2020 election.Does Trump have a path to pass the SAVE America Act?For months, Trump has urged Republicans in Congress to pass legislation known as the SAVE America Act to overhaul voting in federal elections, but the bill has stalled in the Senate.The bill would significantly expand federal control of elections by requiring photo identification and proof of citizenship to vote and prohibiting universal mail-in voting across the country.The president has demanded Senate Republicans abolish the filibuster, the Senate's 60-vote threshold, to allow Republicans to pass the legislation with a simple majority in the Republican-controlled body. Yet it's unclear whether the proposal has enough support to pass even if there were no filibuster. Four Republicans have signaled opposition to the bill.Will Trump discuss a new path to pass components of the bill?House Speaker Mike Johnson has included elements of the SAVE America Act in a proposed budget resolution, which he wants to pass through a legislative process called reconciliation that would allow the Senate to pass the bill with a simple majority. But the Senate parliamentarian could strike down an attempt to pass a voting overhaul as a budget bill.What's next for Iran?At Trump's direction, the U.S has waged an aggressive air military assault on Iran for the past two weeks after a memorandum of understanding reached between the two parties in June quickly fell apart.With no end in sight to the conflict, where does the war go from here?Trump's address presents an opportunity for the president to chart the path to victory in Iran.Trump this week said said he "doesn't want to negotiate" with Iran any longer, accusing Tehran of repeatedly reneging on commitments made in private talks. Is his plan to ramp up attacks further to get Iran to abandon its nuclear program and agree to other U.S. demands?For months, Trump has said the onslaught of U.S. strikes over recent months have produced substantial damage to Iran's military capabilities. But U.S. military force hasn't resulted in Iran caving to demands yet.Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison.