Here we go again.

As he has done for a decade, President Donald Trump is raising the specter of a rigged election, months before final votes are cast. In a primetime address Thursday, which several major networks smartly refused to broadcast live, Trump platformed a repackaged big election lie and preemptively cast doubt on the upcoming midterm elections, perhaps as a pretext for interference.

This was the entire purpose of his speech, sinister and foreboding at times. The 25-minute address was hyped for days, with Trump suggesting a shocking big reveal. Of course, there was no shocking big reveal, just a Mad Libs soup of insinuations about the 2020 election, debunked now for years, most notably by officials in Trump’s first administration.

Allegations included a plot by China against him, which the president suggested was revealed in newly declassified documents. He also claimed that there was a cover-up by “the deep state” that kept information from him and the public about supposed 2020 election plots.........

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