Trump’s planned speech could put Georgia’s 2020 election back in focus
President Donald Trump is expected to level new accusations of voting machine vulnerability and foreign influence in U.S. elections, including possible new allegations involving 2020 elections in Georgia, in a primetime speech Thursday night.
Trump told reporters on Tuesday that his speech will include “really big news” concerning election integrity, although he declined to go into specifics.
“What we’re going to be talking about Thursday --: it doesn’t get bigger,” the president. " Because without free and fair elections you don’t have a country.”
According to a multiple national reports, the administration is weighing the declassification of a large number of intelligence documents related to the election. A report Tuesday by MS NOW said the release is expected to include documents related to Georgia’s 2020 results and Senate runoffs that came shortly after.
Trump could use the nationally televised White House address to revive false claims about the election he’s long claimed was stolen from him. Georgia Democrats are trying to make sure he pays a political price.
U.S. Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock launched preemptive attacks amid the reports of Trump’s plans.
In a news conference in Washington on Tuesday, Ossoff cast any new attack on Georgia’s elections as an insult to the voters who elected him and Warnock.
“When the president calls Georgia elections illegitimate, and if he calls Georgia’s senators illegitimate, he is calling Georgia’s voters illegitimate,” Ossoff said. “He is reheating debunked conspiracy theories and launching bizarre new lies because he fears losing these midterm elections.”
Warnock struck a similarly defiant note on social media, declaring that Trump “is at war with American democracy and Georgia is ground zero.”
“Georgia is the state of John Lewis,” Warnock said in a video posted on X Tuesday. “We will not be intimidated. We are unmoved.”
It’s not clear what Trump might say or whether his plans will change. National news reports offered conflicting accounts of Trump’s agenda. Axios quoted a White House adviser describing the speech as “potpourri” that won’t focus on Georgia, while other outlets reported Trump will raise new allegations of 2020 election interference.
Adding to the intrigue, pro-Trump election activists circulated a memo advertising a private briefing Monday with White House officials about “urgently declassified findings concerning serious election integrity matters.”
A Trump administration spokesman dismissed the significance of the briefing saying the White House regularly holds calls with “stakeholders and other interested parties on a variety of policy matters.”
Some senior Republicans are squeamish about where the president’s speech could lead.
Allies of Rick Jackson, the party’s nominee for governor, worried Trump’s remarks could overshadow a planned rally Thursday in North Georgia, Jackson’s first major event since winning the Republican nomination.
And party leaders had little appetite for another debate over 2020 that could revive scrutiny of Senate nominee Mike Collins’ repeated false claims that Trump carried Georgia.
For Democrats, the coordinated response reflects the changing political stakes. Warnock is not on the ballot this year, but he is increasingly mentioned as a 2028 contender. And Ossoff has every incentive to frame Trump’s fixation on 2020 as a threat to Georgia voters ahead of a tough reelection battle.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a potential presidential candidate who swung through Georgia on Tuesday, said voters are “exhausted” by Trump’s focus on 2020.
“He continues to bring this up because he cannot get out of his mind that he actually could have lost.”