Trump speech live: President throws US elections into chaos with ‘declassified’ voter fraud conspiracy claim

Donald Trump began his remarks with a general-purpose stump speech, rather than the anticipated blockbuster news on elections.

The country is “safer, stronger, and far wealthier than it has ever been before,” Trump claimed, while recounting many of his White House’s signature policies.

We’re expecting President Trump to begin his elections speech any minute.

You can watch the remarks live via the White House YouTube channel.

President Donald Trump is gearing up for his major elections speech, but the pomp and circumstance is actually a sign of weakness, according to one Democratic senator.

“So he’s desperate,” Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut told CNN. “He’s very unpopular. He wants to cheat. His avenues are being narrowed. And so this just may be a guy who needs to yell and scream on TV for an hour, but it may land with a giant thud.”

We still don’t know what President Trump will say in his elections speech tonight, but it could have to do with China, according to one Republican senator.

“I would encourage every American to tune in tonight to the President’s speech,” Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio wrote on X on Thursday afternoon. “This may be the most important Oval Office address since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The time for complacency with China is over.”

Some Republicans are calling on Trump to stop talking about the 2020 election ahead of his big speech tonight. Sen. Tommy Tuberville is not one of those people.

During a Thursday interview with Newsmax, the Alabama lawmaker claimed not only that Trump was exposing “crooked” Democrats, but that some of the senators own colleagues had been fraudulently elected.

“We probably have four or five senators that didn’t legally win,” Tuberville said, though he didn’t name names. “They shouldn’t be up here.”

Tuberville went on to baselessly link Democrats to illegal activity and the killing of activist Charlie Kirk.

“They lie,” Tuberville continued. “They cheat. They steal. They’ve tried to kill the president three times. They killed Charlie Kirk. It’s unbelievable. We need to fight back, and thank goodness for President Trump.”

More on the political discourse ahead of Trump’s 2020 speech in our full story:

Outside of whatever President Trump says during his speech tonight, another major storyline is how news networks plan to cover the remarks.

Some have opted to carry the speech live, while others plan to only show clips or after-the-fact news reports.

Fox News is in the yes column.

It will run the president’s speech live, according to Bret Baier, Fox’s chief political anchor.

Others may be shying away from covering the speech for legal concerns.

Baier’s network had to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars to settle an election-related defamation case over claims about the 2020 election.

Prominent Republicans are angry some TV news networks are choosing not to broadcast President Trump’s upcoming elections speech live on air, instead opting to show clips or after-the-fact news reports about Trump’s address.

“Cowards,” White House communications director Steven Cheung wrote on X. “NBC and ABC don’t want you to hear the truth. All they want to do is hide the facts from YOU.”

First term Trump administration press secretary Sean Spicer called on the White House to punish the networks, some of which will air the full speech on their streaming or radio channels.

“Networks broadcasting on public airways apparently don’t think it’s in the public interest to hear from their president,” Spicer wrote on X. “So [Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt] should stop calling on them in briefings and yank them from the press pool.”

Here’s what we know about the speech so far.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has branded his new military initiative the “High-T Department of War” – but medical experts warn the plan to test thousands of active-duty service members for low testosterone is flatly ignoring standard clinical science.

The directive, which will add mandatory testosterone screenings to annual health assessments for troops 30 and older, has drawn sharp criticism from experts who warn the policy lacks scientific backing, defies established clinical guidelines and could introduce unnecessary health risks, particularly for female service members.

“This is a surprising advent because they’re targeting recruits or military personnel over the age of 30, both males and females, and just doing a screening test, devoid of whether you have symptoms or not,” Dr. Hugh Cassiere, a physician in critical care at Northwell Health, told The Independent. “That really goes against guidelines.”

Jasmine Fernández has the full story.

Several Republicans have publicly shared their reservations about President Trump’s upcoming elections speech, arguing continuing to focus on the 2020 contest could pull focus from key issues ahead of the 2026 midterms.

“I don’t know what he’s going to say,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski told CNN on Thursday. “There’s a lot of speculation that he’s going to take it back to 2020. I’m one who’s always looking forward instead of in the rearview mirror with suspicion and conspiracy theories. So I don’t know that that’s going to be constructive.”

“We want to encourage voters to believe in our process,” she added.

Of course, Republicans have long sought that Trump stays on message and focuses on core issues such as affordability and taxes, though he rarely sticks to the script.

We’ll see whether the GOP pleas for discipline have an effect this time around once Trump hits the airwaves.