Trump fixates on 2020 while Republicans warily eye midterms | Opinion

President Donald Trump, desperate to enact an unconstitutional federalization of America's elections ahead of November's midterm elections, reverted in a July 16 national address to his three favorite conspiracy-theory boogeymen.

America's elections are "vulnerable to being rigged and stolen," Trump claimed, because of diabolical efforts by China, the "deep state" in our country's government and the journalists who debunk his lies.

But the most interesting takeaway from the meandering 25-minute speech was what he didn't say. At no point did Trump claim that foreign adversaries have ever successfully altered American election results. And he did not repeat his most common election lie, that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and stolen from him.

Trump's speech didn't change the facts about elections

Trump teased the speech for days as "really big news," seeking a large audience.

Instead, he offered only a rehash of debunked election fraud conspiracy theories.

The truth: American intelligence services and congressional committees have long concluded that foreign adversaries like Russia, Iran and China have attempted to influence our elections, but have faltered when trying to infiltrate the electronic infrastructure of our voting systems.

And, despite Trump's claims of concern, he has spent his second term stripping the very protections put in place to safeguard American elections.

Trump's real motivation for his speech runs on two tracks. He wants to persuade Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would allow him to meddle in how states use mail ballots, voter ID and citizen verification. Or, if that doesn't pass, he seeks to create chaos in the midterms as pretext for seizing control of the election results.

It's no surprise that America's foreign adversaries have attempted to meddle in our elections.

Special counsel Robert Mueller, in a 2019 report about Russia's attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election, cited a "sweeping and systemic" effort. That included hacking efforts for state agencies that compile voting registration and tabulate election results, but which did not alter the ballot tally.

A bipartisan U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 2020 released a report about the 2016 election, citing "irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling" in that presidential election. The Republican chair of that committee was Marco Rubio, then a senator from Florida and now Trump's secretary of State.

That Senate report also said China and Iran were preparing to join Russia in trying to meddle in the 2020 presidential election.

Sure enough, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), in a 2021 report, said it had found evidence that Russia and Iran had worked to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. The assessment said investigators found no evidence that those efforts reached the level of altering voter registration or ballot tabulation.

While all that is available in the public record, Trump has been intentionally slashing the federal government's intelligence infrastructure to keep our elections safe and secure.

It's Trump who has done a good deal to weaken election security, actually

Pam Bondi, the attorney general the president fired in April, disbanded the Department of Justice's Foreign Influence Task Force in 2025, soon after Trump's second term started.

That task force was formed during Trump's first term to track disinformation efforts in America by Russia and other countries.

Trump in February 2025 also slashed funding for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, which had drawn Republican criticism for countering misinformation about the 2020 presidential election. The Trump administration justified those cuts as "eliminating weaponization and waste."

And at ODNI, Trump has shifted the mission, dismantling that agency's efforts to track and warn about foreign election threats, making it more focused on his incessant and unsubstantiated claims about election fraud in America.

Trump is in a serious bind here, with the elections looming and his war in Iran stagnating, increasing the costs of gasoline and groceries. He doesn't have a plan to fix any of that. So he reverts to form, trying to distract with theatrical but threadbare conspiracy theories.

Trump loves a big audience, but his "rigged" rhetoric only plays with Republicans.

Republicans have to be tired of Trump's election nonsense

A Quinnipiac University national poll released a month after the 2020 election found that 60% of registered voters thought that contest was legitimate, while 70% of Republicans disagreed. A follow-up survey from Quinnipiac in May 2021 found that 64% of voters called the contest legitimate, while 66% of Republicans disagreed.

This June, an Economist/YouGov national poll found that 53% of Americans did not think the 2020 election was "rigged," while 28% believed it was and 19% were unsure. Half of Republicans saw it as rigged.

Trump is also trapped in his own timeline. A Democrat has been in control of the White House whenever Trump wins, and Trump was president when he lost.

Did he cheat himself? Or is he just obsessed with his loss, and changing the perception of it.

Trump sent a pair of emails to supporters on July 15 and July 16 about his impending speech, with one teasing an "earth shattering announcement," with both directing to a fundraising webpage for a political action committee that said nothing about the speech or elections.

You know who really isn't the audience for the president's big distraction play about election security? That would be his Republican allies in Congress. Imagine them traveling the campaign trail this summer, with voters worried about war and the economy and health care ‒ with Trump flogging long-debunked conspiracy theories.

I'm sure those Republicans want to look forward, where the voters are focused. But Trump will make them dwell in the past, where only he remains.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on Bluesky, @bychrisbrennan.bsky.social, and on X, @ByChrisBrennan. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Translating Politics, here.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump fixates on 2020 while Republicans warily eye midterms | Opinion

Reporting by Chris Brennan, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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This story was originally published July 17, 2026 at 9:08 AM.