The president has claimed more than 100 times that the 2020 election was stolen. So why did he shy away from that lie in his big “election fraud” speech?
July 17, 20268:52 AM
Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.
On Thursday night, Donald Trump raved for 25 minutes on live television about vague allegations of illegally registered voters, the susceptibility of voting machines to hacking, and foreign countries’ efforts to influence how Americans cast ballots. But the most notable aspect of the president’s hoarse and breathy address was what he didn’t say. Despite much ado about declassified documents and vulnerable voter rolls, at no point in the speech did Trump, who has been sore about losing to Joe Biden for going on six years, directly claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
Instead, the closest Trump came was hand-waving aspersions. “This intelligence underscores why we must take urgent action to ensure that our own system can never, ever be hacked or compromised like it was in the past,” he said at one point, without specifying 2020. He added, “We’re taking swift action to ensure that sensitive voter data is better protected so we can never be bought, we can never be hacked, and we can never watch a stolen election again,” once more declining to name which election he meant. Rather than some grand reveal, the speech ended with Trump lamely encouraging Americans to pressure members of Congress to pass the SAVE America Act. That bill, which would create numerous new hurdles to voting, appears dead in the Senate.
