Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.

On Thursday night, Donald Trump raved for 25 minutes on live television about vague allegations of illegally registered voters, the susceptibility of voting machines to hacking, and foreign countries’ efforts to influence how Americans cast ballots. But the most notable aspect of the president’s hoarse and breathy address was what he didn’t say. Despite much ado about declassified documents and vulnerable voter rolls, at no point in the speech did Trump, who has been sore about losing to Joe Biden for going on six years, directly claim that the 2020 election was stolen.

Instead, the closest Trump came was hand-waving aspersions. “This intelligence underscores why we must take urgent action to ensure that our own system can never, ever be hacked or compromised like it was in the past,” he said at one point, without specifying 2020. “We’re taking swift action to ensure that sensitive voter data is better protected so we can never be bought, we can never be hacked, and we can never watch a stolen election again,” he added later, again without naming which election he meant. Rather than some grand reveal, the speech ended with Trump lamely encouraging Americans to pressure members of Congress to pass the SAVE America Act. That bill, which would create numerous new hurdles to voting, appears dead in the Senate.

On one hand, Trump’s implication was hard to miss. On the other, omitting any clear-cut claim that the 2020 race was rigged is deeply out of character. The president has repeatedly and openly cried foul about a contest he lost by seven million votes, lies he started telling even before it was called for Biden. “Frankly, we did win this election,” Trump told supporters around 2:30 a.m. on Election Night that........

© Slate