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Trump’s Election Fraud Speech Was a Sick Joke—and a Threat

Not even Fox News buys Trump’s new lies, but they will be used to undermine the midterms.

Monitors display Donald Trump during a prime-time address to the nation in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House, on Thursday, July 16, 2026.

Surprisingly, there are some lies so outrageous that even Sean Hannity is reluctant to endorse them.

As expected, Donald Trump’s address to the nation on Thursday night was a farrago of nonsense promoting his conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Trump has been pushing this lie since the moment he lost that race, and, as his latest speech showed, even his victory in 2024 wasn’t enough to stop him from trying to rig American election laws to favor the Republican Party.

The speech was long on claims of shadowy conspiracies by China and the Deep State and short on actual evidence. While Trump presented China as the main threat, he also alluded to possible election hacks by North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela. None of these claims were credible.

In fact, the speech was so disgracefully packed with lies that even some of the president’s most loyal lapdogs decided to keep their distance from it. Before the speech, Republican officials were already leaking to Politico their concern that Trump was wasting his time rehashing conspiracy theories that appeal to the base rather than offering a positive economic message that would win over moderate voters in the midterms.

Fox News was even more cautious, as The New York Times reports:

Fox News, which paid $787 million to settle a defamation suit over false statements about the 2020 election, took a careful approach in covering Trump’s remarks. Sean Hannity, a Trump ally, said that the president’s claims were “pretty remarkable,” but was careful not to endorse Trump’s allegations. “I’m sure anybody that cares about truth will want to do a deep dive into all of this,” Hannity told viewers. A Fox News correspondent, Aishah Hasnie, then stated bluntly on-air that the network “is not in a position to evaluate the accuracy of the president’s statements and claims at this time.”

Fox News, which paid $787 million to settle a defamation suit over false statements about the 2020 election, took a careful approach in covering Trump’s remarks. Sean Hannity, a Trump........

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