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Donald Trump will address the nation on Thursday in a live primetime televised address that has become the subject of fevered guesswork amid speculation he will make headline-grabbing announcements on election security and the war with Iran.
Expectations surrounding the address have been raised by Trump himself, who promised “really big news” without being specific.
“It doesn’t get bigger, because without free and fair elections, you don’t have a country,” he told reporters at the White House on Tuesday.
The anticipation that he will concentrate on elections stems from his continued preoccupation with his ۲۰۲۰ election defeat to Joe Biden, which he continues to falsely claim was a result of voter fraud.
He has recently installed a key ally, Bill Pulte, as acting director of national intelligence, despite the fact that he has no previous intelligence experience. Pulte, who has used his previous position in charge of the federal housing finance agency to dig for evidence for retribution against Trump’s adversaries, is believed to have provided intelligence documents meant to validate Trump’s claims of possible interference in the ۲۰۲۰ poll.
The president has also been clamoring for the passage of the Save America Act, legislation requiring strict voter ID but which is currently stuck in Congress.
The speech, scheduled for ۹pm ET, also comes after Trump jettisoned last month’s vaunted ceasefire deal with Iran and resumed ordering military strikes in an effort to loosen the Tehran regime’s grip over the strait of Hormuz, which has been largely closed to commercial shipping since the start of the war on ۲۸ February, causing global energy costs to soar.
White House officials have acknowledged that Trump may also address the topic, saying the speech will be “a potpourri”.
Trump made a televised address on Iran on ۱ April, a month after the outbreak of the war. The speech was widely attacked by critics who seized on his threat to bomb Iran “back to the stone ages”.
Another shortly before last Christmas on the economy was criticized for an aggressive delivery style that featured Trump seemingly shouting and talking too fast.
Despite holding regular media briefings, Trump has delivered relatively few set-piece addresses from the White House – a stratagem frequently used by past presidents to convey messages deemed of paramount national importance.
The setting involves reading a set text from a teleprompter for a limited period, constraints at odds with Trump’s speaking style, which often deviates from the written script and meanders at length.
Officials have indicated that Trump may give more televised speeches in future.
“We want to get into the rhythm of doing this,” an adviser told Axios. “It’s powerful when you give primetime speeches that give a sense of the importance to what he’s saying.”
