Part II of President Trump’s Address to the Nation

What a disaster

By: Austin Abbring

July 20, 2026

As I have continued to review Donald Trump’s address from a few days ago, all I can say is that this is yet another instance of behavior by Donald Trump that should invoke the 25th Amendment. It is unfortunate that I can toss around that notion so easily and so often, but here we are. The 25th should have serious implications, and I hate to almost water it down with this presidency, but I do not know how else to classify this utterly nonsensical and delusional behavior. Speeches like the one made last night are so damaging to our democracy and a direct threat to it. Business as usual by our commander in chief. 

Voting is a fundamental right, and for the president of the United States to get in front of the camera and continually suggest widespread fraud with no evidence to back it up, to attempt to disenfranchise voters, to suggest our election integrity is under serious question, and to dissuade people from voting by breaking their confidence in elections is beyond discouraging. Everything he said last night could have been a Twitter or Truth Social post at 3 a.m., as he loves to do. That speech essentially pandered to his base because it is the only group that still believes him at this point. 

The vast majority of Americans know he is lying, and they do not care about his claims. People are exhausted by it. Why are we re-litigating an election he lost six years ago where nearly all of the “cases” were essentially killed on standing? Donald Trump has had six years to substantiate the claims he is making, but cannot find a single iota of evidence to run with. It is embarrassing that this is the representative of our nation, which is supposed to be amongst the leaders of the free world. 

Even members of his own party, and past members of his first administration, are exhausted by it. Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told NewsNation, “When you tell someone that there’s a major problem, we need to have a solution, we need to have a path forward. I don’t know that he gave a lot of people that.” 

Republican Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska said, “Re-litigating 2020 is a mistake. It’s a losing issue, and most people that are reasonable and aren’t so clouded by partisanship know it’s baloney.”

Lisa Murkowski, Republican Senator from Alaska, explained, “If it was meant to influence people like me, it didn’t get me there. What we heard last night was there are foreign interests trying to influence us, but they weren’t effective at basically hacking into our system. I don’t think there was much last night that would change views on whether we should pass the SAVE Act.” Which, the fact that she is still on the fence about the SAVE Act at this point is laughable. Those foreign interests, like China, have the ability to purchase voter rolls as much as you or I do. Even with that public information, there is nothing to suggest they hacked into or compromised voting machines to change the outcomes of the 2020 election. They did not even have the ability to overturn a county comptroller election, let alone a federal election. 

Senator John Cornyn of Texas commented, “We have 109 days until the midterm elections, and I don’t understand talking about what happened six years ago in light of these upcoming elections. We ought to be talking about things looking forward that our constituents are most concerned about.” 

Thomas Massie, in an appearance on MS Now, criticized the speech and GOP colleagues, “But I don’t think the problem is that our elections aren’t secure, because we control the House, we control the Senate, we control the White House, and to some degree we control the Supreme Court. So I ask my Republican colleagues, why are you complaining about election fraud? We won all the damn elections. The fraud that’s going on is we’re not holding ourselves to the promises that we made of fiscal responsibility, putting America first, and making America healthy. The problem is we’re wasting the opportunity that we were given in these elections that we won - all of them.” To be clear, I do not agree with Trump and Republicans' platform and vision whatsoever, and I knew that many of the campaign promises he made would either not come to fruition or would be an abject failure. But yes, the GOP has complete control right now, and they have completely squandered it. Which, in hindsight, is going to be a good thing, as the damage they could have done would have been even worse. Let the party cannibalize itself. 

I know this is a lot of quotes, but one more here that I think is the most damning. It is important to display how much of a rift is happening in the Republican Party over this, and how obviously nonsensical all of that speech was. On CBS’s coverage following the address, which is no lefty news organization, there was an interview with John Solomon, who attempted to legitimize the President’s concerns and efforts and is a member of a special task force on election fraud. As I watched this interview live, I could tell this guy was sweating bullets. The tie and collar were getting tighter and tighter around his neck as he attempted to adjudicate for Trump’s conflations and outright lies. Well, my intuition was correct, as there is now post-interview footage of Solomon being ushered away after follow-up questions from Vaughn Hillyard, a journalist on scene, which is as follows:

Hillyard: “Did you acknowledge there were no votes changed in 2020?”

Solomon: “All I can acknowledge is what the intelligence shows. Right? The intelligence committee has zero evidence that someone has flipped, that a foreign power flipped a vote in 2020, 22, or 24.”

Hillyard: “And you have no, you’re able to…”

Solomon: “We’re not through all the documents…”

Hillyard: “You’re able to acknowledge that Venezuela has not tampered with voting machines in the United States?

Solomon: “No, the uh intelligence is very clear. They did it on their own machines. Why is it important they did it on their machines? Their machine protocols are the same as America. Why? Cause for a long time they did…(he gets cut off here and his team starts pulling him away)

Hillyard: “The 2020 election was, in fact, the results as we…

Solomon: (still being pulled away) “I’m still researching, so let me, I’m just the first…”

Hillyard: “So there’s no intelligence…”

Solomon: “Not yet…”

Solomon’s team finally pulled him away as he continued to spill the beans that he was not supposed to be spilling. That was the interview of someone who knows he went on TV, lied, and does not want his name fully attached to this. He seemed to desperately want to detach from these actions taken by the Trump administration in this last-ditch, Battle of the Bulge-style efforts to not get wiped out in the midterm elections. I am not absolving Solomon’s complicity in all of this ridiculousness, but the guy was trying so hard to distance himself to some degree. 

Finally, even Fox and Friends did not air highlights of the speech. There was no way to clip it to make it seem less ludicrous than it was. I want to repeat that. Fox and Friends, a massive Trump-boosting bullhorn, could not spin any portion of this address from the “old man yells at cloud” display we all were unfortunate enough to witness. Instead of misleading the American people about our elections, the security of our elections, and individual voter fraud, the Trump administration could turn things around by moving forward and making Election Day a federal holiday and increasing funding for election administration so that states could achieve more efficient outcomes. I am willing to wager my yearly salary that neither of those things will happen under this administration.