There was widespread speculation ahead of President Donald Trump’s speech Thursday night that he would use it to relitigate the 2020 election in Georgia.
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Trump lost Georgia narrowly in 2020 to Joe Biden, and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — both Republicans — resisted Trump’s attempts to pressure them to overturn the election. Trump was indicted in 2023 over those efforts, though the charges were later dropped.
“I expect the president to reheat debunked conspiracy theories about the repeatedly litigated and audited and confirmed 2020 presidential election in Georgia — an election that Donald Trump lost,’ Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia) told reporters ahead of the speech.
But Trump never brought up Georgia during the speech. Instead, he argued that the United States needs to address election security vulnerabilities to ensure “we can never watch a stolen election again” — without saying which election he believed was stolen.
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Ossoff and other Democrats said after the speech that they believe Trump was laying the groundwork to interfere in November’s midterm elections.
“I … heard a president signaling his unmistakable intent to attack these elections and our voting rights, just as he tried to throw out our votes and seize the presidency in 2020,” Ossoff wrote on X.
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