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Trump Delivered the Crazy, the Democrats Delivered… Tweets

In this week’s Elie v. US, our justice correspondent schools the Democrats on the proper response to Trump’s speech. Plus: Where have all the African American baseball players gone?

US President Donald Trump gestures after addressing the nation on July 16, 2026.

By the time you read this, Donald Trump will have made his big Oval Office speech about the election fraud that doesn’t exist and the SAVE Act that won’t pass. I mean, I’m just guessing. I’m writing this before the speech, and who knows what could happen? Trump could announce that extraterrestrials have made contact but will be forced to remain in Mexico because they’re chartreuse.

Still, the betting money is that he’ll lie his ass off about the upcoming elections in a flailing attempt to force the Senate to pass his bill or to lay the groundwork for sending ICE jackboots to polling places to intimidate voters—or both.

I wish the Democrats were mounting an organized response. I know that the opposition party traditionally responds only after the State of the Union address. But that’s been a tradition only since 1966 (of course, it was the Republicans who started it, when Lyndon Johnson was president). There’s no reason Democrats shouldn’t demand equal time from the television networks and respond to Trump’s lies as soon as he’s done spewing them. Democrats should counter Trump’s narrative, and then go into detail about all the things Trump and the Republican Party are doing to rig the midterms—from gerrymandering, to purging the Election Assistance Commission, to threatening to send ICE thugs to the polls on Election Day.

The Democrats have done it before, in 2019, in response to one of Trump’s unhinged rants about immigration during his first term. I can’t think of a more critical time to do it again. This should be Hakeem Jeffries’s moment. A prime-time speech from the guy who wants to be the leader of the Democratic Party in which he tells us how we’re going to stop Trump from stealing the election is something we need right now.

Of course, mounting a response would require the Democrats to be an organized political party with a self-preservation instinct and an ability to think creatively about how best to combat rising authoritarianism. And, well, “lmao @ Dems,” as the kids say.

I guess next week I’ll just post all 5 billion articles election law lawyer Marc Elias writes about the speech and ask you all to share them in your networks. It’s pretty much all we have left.

Speaking of things I haven’t watched: Todd Blanche sat for his confirmation hearings for attorney general this week. Reports indicate it went as I expected: Blanche believes he has one client, and that client is not the American people. It is Donald Trump.

Blanche is most recently famous for trying to push through a $1.8 billion slush fund for Trump’s January 6 army. A judge just voided the settlement that led to that money, saying that the terms of the agreement—which involved the government (the DOJ) forcing the government (the IRS) to pay the government money—is “self-dealing.”

Trump finally had to pay E. Jean Carroll $5 million for defaming her.

Lawyers for ICE admitted that the agency was lying when it said it didn’t have any documents detailing plans to place ICE personnel at polling stations during the election. In fact, it may have a “trove” of such documents. I am once again asking for this agency to be........

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