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Trump opens his address with a range of claims about his administration's wins since he was elected, including his immigration policies.

"America is respected like we have never been respected before," he says.

Audits and recounts of the 2020 election results in the swing states took place either on a partial or state-wide basis. While vote totals had nominal adjustments, none of the audits changed overall results, a Stanford University-MIT project found. 

Another study that analyzed hundreds of audits in over half of the states in the 2020 election concluded that the "net error rate in counting presidential votes was on the order of thousandths of a per cent." The error rate in the Trump-Biden contest was not inconsistent with the error rate for state and federal votes.

While Trump and his allies railed against the voting machines of Toronto-founded Dominion Voting Systems, a Washington Post report found Dominion machines were used in less than half of the counties in the perceived swing states. Moreover, the Post found, there was no curious disparity in performance for Trump based on which machines processed votes, and some data suggested Trump may have done better in counties in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that used Dominion machines, compared to those that used other systems.

A joint study from the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security found no evidence of manipulated election results.

Trump's address also comes a few months after what seemed to be a very public step from the Justice Department to pursue the president's claims of a stolen election. 

In January, the FBI searched an election office in Georgia and seized hundreds of boxes of ballots and other documents from the 2020 election.

At the time of the search, an FBI spokesperson said agents were "executing a court-authorized law-enforcement action" at Fulton County's main election office in Union City, just south of Atlanta. The FBI confirmed to Reuters that the seized boxes contained ballots.

However, earlier this month a federal judge rejected a government subpoena — calling it "untethered to any reasonable need" — that requested the names and personal contact information of Fulton County election employees and voluntary poll workers.

Trump last delivered a televised, prime-time address to the nation more than four months ago. 

He didn't do so at the start of the war with Iran — something previous U.S. Presidents typically did when sending troops into combat — but, instead, more than 30 days into the fighting, at a time when the already weak public support for the war was running low. 

Tonight, reports from a variety of media outlets suggest Trump will reveal what he will claim to be new evidence of foreign attempts to interfere with U.S. Elections and the vulnerability of voting machines. 

There's nothing new about Trump claiming falsely that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. What is new of late is his increased frequency of broadening out that claim to include elections across the country. 

There's evidence that his real motivation with tonight's address is about casting doubt on the upcoming 2026 midterms. 

The clearest sign of that came from White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt during her briefing earlier Thursday. 

"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, and we need to make some adjustments moving forward," Leavitt said.  

Democracy Docket, an organization founded by Democratic election-rights attorney Marc Elias, believes Trump's address is aimed at "accelerating the White House’s multi-pronged campaign to restrict the right to vote and increase the executive branch’s control over U.S. Elections ahead of the 2026 midterms." 

If the Republicans lose control of Congress in the midterms, impeachment proceedings against Trump are highly likely.

The Associated Press

Trump provided few details when asked about the content of the speech on Tuesday, but warned: "without free and fair elections, you don't have a country."

The president's preoccupation with voting fraud claims and election security dates back at least to 2016, when he refused to say whether he would accept defeat to Democrat Hillary Clinton. After he won, he convened a voting integrity commission to support his claims that widespread voter fraud cost him the popular vote — which Clinton won — though the commission disbanded without uncovering any such evidence.

Four years later, after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, Trump again claimed cheating and zeroed in on the Democrat's narrow win in Georgia. Trump pressured Georgia's secretary of state to "find 11,780 votes," just enough votes to overturn Biden's victory in the state. He, along with more than a dozen allies, was indicted in the state, though the charges were later dropped.

Repeated audits and reviews — many run by Republicans — have found no significant fraud occurred in 2020.

Before winning in 2024, Trump was again laying the groundwork to claim cheating if he lost. After returning to office, he stocked his administration with officials who back his false claims of 2020 election fraud.

U.S. President Donald Trump is giving a national address tonight from the White House that is expected to include a focus on elections. An administration official told Reuters it will involve newly declassified intelligence on voting machine vulnerabilities.

Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed that he lost his 2020 re-election campaign against Democrat Joe Biden because of massive fraud.

Trump has promised "really big news" and has also hinted that the 9 p.m. ET speech will include other topics. 

"We'll be discussing other things, too," Trump said. "It's going to be a very big announcement."

Trump's address comes as he's dealing with controversies at home and abroad, including the collapse of the U.S.'s deal with Iran and two recent deadly shootings by immigration officers.

He also faces upcoming midterm elections that could, if the results favour Democrats, make the president's job more difficult for the rest of his term.

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