President Donald Trump a speech that was widely praised and promised great revelations about interfere in the 2020 election failed to deliver. On Thursday night, the president made sweeping claims about Chinese interference and a cover-up by “deep state,” and repeated denied claims about non-citizen voting. He pointed to the drop of documents on the White House website as proof, although the files contained no evidence to support his claims.
To Trump’s loyal army of supporters, this did not matter. “This is a huge scandal from President Trump,” campaigner Patrick Byrne told school shooting conspiracy theorist Alex Jones shortly after the speech ended, adding: “This is bigger than if they released the JFK files.” (Byrne failed to mention that the Trump administration did so release the JFK files last year.)
Jones added during the announcement: “The depth situation is hitting a brick wall right now.”
Conspiracy theorists claimed the speech would provide the basis for Trump to enact the Sedition Act, a law that could to allow the president to send the army to the November elections, although a range of military legal capacity in such cases it is still unknown.
Lara Logan, a former CBS reporter who has been star in the anti-choice community, to be called speech “calculation” and wrote on X that it was “the opening salvo in a larger plan.”
The plan, according to many detractors, has already seen Trump push Congress to pass it SAVE America anti-vote legislationand, if that fails, ask for greater authority.
“Trump is willing to do whatever it takes to win the 2026 midterms, including using the Sedition Act to secure polling places and Military and Federal Law Enforcement,” a member of the anti-election group Sarasota Patriots wrote in the Telegraph.
“After Trump proves that he has exhausted every option before going the Executive route, he will invoke the Sedition Act and save the Republic,” Jacob Creech, a famous conspiracy theorist known online as WarClandestine, wrote on X.
Wendy Rogers, Arizona state senator and popular election conspiracy theorist, shared Creech’s post, to write: “This is called ‘prepositioning’ and it is EXACTLY what will happen. You are watching it in REAL TIME.”
Michael Flynn, the disgraced former national security adviser who has been at the heart of the anti-election movement, called for an immediate arrest, citing no evidence beyond Trump’s words. “The directors of the CIA and NSA in his first term should be immediately arrested for treason,” Flynn wrote on X.
This is what the experts who have been closely following the movement to reject the election expected.
“Tonight the White House ran a tired playbook: selected intelligence and a deluge of raw, vetted reports, dressed up as national security disclosures, to create an excuse to take lawless action,” said Alexandra Chandler, director of impact programs at the nonprofit Protect Democracy who worked in the intelligence community for 13 years. result in 2026 if their side loses in November.”
Speech by issuance of documents he faced outrage from election officials and polling experts. “This is all bullshit,” Cisco Aguilar, Nevada’s secretary of state, wrote in a statement emailed to WIRED. Maryland state congressman Jamie Raskin, former House impeachment manager, told Zeteo that Trump’s speech was “humorous,” “driving,” and “almost self-deprecating.”
But perhaps the worst judgment of all came from within the Trump administration. John Solomon, a conservative journalist known for challenging the narrative about Trump’s ties to Russia, was recently appointed a White House insider to review documents that the government claimed were related to election interference. (While Trump did not mention Russia’s role in the election meddling in his speech, Russia was mentioned in documents released by the White House in assessment that Russia is the only country that tried to interfere in the US election in 2020—for aim former president Joe Biden.)
