Republicans don't want to go there again on Trump's 2020 election fraud claims

For weeks, President Donald Trump had privately floated the idea of delivering a televised address to detail claims of foreign interference and purported election fraud - "shocking" new discoveries, he'd go on to say, that had been covered up by the so-called "Deep State" and should be a central focus of elected officials.

Advisers initially steered him away from the idea for a prime-time address, but it was quickly resurrected. Dozens of Cabinet members and close aides gathered to watch his speech in the East Room on Thursday, dutifully standing and applauding when he finished. The next morning, Trump bragged about the "great reviews" and "big audience" for the address.

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But outside of the president's list of frequently dialed contacts and the clips assembled of White House-aligned influencers praising his speech, the prime-time address failed to galvanize conservatives, with some publicly questioning his focus on 2020 as the midterms approach. Republicans fighting to maintain congressional control this fall largely sidestepped the message.

By the weekend, the White House-aligned commentators and members of Congress who had pushed the Trump team's talking points about the speech had seemingly moved on. The muted response underscored a broader political reality: Many Republicans facing voters this fall have shown little interest in making Trump's renewed focus on the 2020 election central to their campaigns as they head into a midterm complicated by the president's weak standing with independent voters.

As Trump's favorite cable network Fox News largely ignored the address Friday morning, former Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley, the Trump-endorsed GOP nominee for Senate in battleground North Carolina, held a 34-minute campaign event largely focused on public safety.

'We're going to talk about the economy and what I'm going to do to make sure everybody makes more and keeps more. We're going to talk about our military and our national security," Whatley said. "But the number one issue that we want to talk about in this election cycle, that we need to talk about in this election cycle, is keeping our kids and our communities safe."

Asked by a reporter afterward about Trump's latest messaging, Whatley, who has previously boosted some of Trump's 2020 election fraud claims, said he is a "big proponent of election integrity," and of the signature election legislation Trump has pressed Congress to pass.

Whatley predicted that his race will be "decided within a percentage point," though he has consistently trailed former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper in polling by much more than that. He is fighting to succeed retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, a moderate Republican who has had a turbulent relationship with Trump and regularly asserts his independence from the president.

The "clear and simple" explanation for why most Republican candidates aren't clamoring to talk about the 2020 election is that voters are focused elsewhere, said Paul Shumaker, a veteran Republican strategist and longtime political adviser to Tillis, who declined to comment directly on Trump's speech.

"If candidates are not talking about the economy, if candidates are not talking about affordability, if they're not talking about how they're going to make people's lives at home cheaper and less expensive, then they're not talking about the issues that voters care about," he said.

Democrats seized on the address, which Trump promoted as revealing "really big news," to accuse the president of laying the groundwork to challenge election results if Republicans lose this fall. Some of Trump's own hard-right allies, meanwhile, complained the speech amounted to little more than rhetoric, lacking a concrete plan to hold anyone accountable for the purported fraud.

Trump had initially wanted to give the televised address a few weeks earlier, in late June, according to two people with knowledge of White House deliberations about the speech, but advisers managed to put it off. As an alternative idea - and to avoid a prime-time address - the president's team also mulled the idea of presenting the declassified information to reporters during a White House briefing to be held soon after press secretary Karoline Leavitt returned to work late last month.

Ultimately, Trump got his way.

Briefings with Trump on the new material continued into last week. Administration officials, in consultation with some outside Trump allies, reexamined old FBI files and other records dating back to the first Trump administration. But the documents later posted to the White House website largely reflected information that was publicly known and still did not prove foreign countries had hijacked votes or that election officials in the United States conspired to rig the 2020 election against Trump.

Matthew Bartlett, who served as a State Department appointee in Trump's first term and is now a Republican public affairs strategist, described Trump's Thursday speech as "mess," and said the lack of new evidence undercut Trump's broader effort to pressure Republicans into passing the Save America Act, "which he has oddly weaponized against his own party." He said many Republicans seem to be thankful Trump's message didn't successfully break through.

The pervasive sentiment afterward, Bartlett said, seems to be, "If the president makes outrageous claims about an election and no one is listening, did it even happen?"

Two Republicans opposed to Trump's Save America Act, Tillis and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), indicated in interviews afterward that Trump's speech did not change their position. Senate Republican leadership has long maintained the legislation does not have the votes to pass, but Trump has continued to lambast senators for not doing so.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a co-sponsor of the Save America Act who is retiring after losing his primary election this spring to a Trump-backed challenger, was similarly dismissive. "There wasn't a whole lot new" in Trump's speech, he said Friday at the Aspen Security Forum. Foreign adversaries have long tried to "sow discord" and influence American elections, Cornyn said, "but the bottom line is none of this would have changed the outcome."

"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," Cornyn said.

The speech also fell short with Trump's hard-right supporters who wanted a more aggressive response.

Former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, who hosts the popular MAGA "War Room" show, said the president's focus on passing his election bill is no longer enough, arguing the legislation could not take effect before the midterms even if Congress passed it immediately. He said arrests should be made in connection with the "cover-up" of alleged election fraud in 2020, and that Trump should issue a "national security emergency executive order."

"It's too late for the Save America Act," Bannon said Friday. After Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin gave a news conference Friday following up on Trump's claims from his speech about large numbers of illegal immigrants on voter rolls, Bannon told his listeners that he was "decidedly unimpressed" and didn't hear "any sense of urgency or any real action plan."

Prominent right-wing ally Laura Loomer questioned on social media as Trump spoke whether any of the information he was sharing was new.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Americans continue to give Trump largely negative reviews on his job performance, as they have for months, according to a recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll. Trump's renewed focus on his 2020 election loss comes as polls continue to register voters' frustration with his handling of the economy and the Iran war.

And while Republicans are not losing by a wide margin on a hypothetical midterm ballot, despite Trump's deep unpopularity, Republican voters currently aren't as energized to turn up at the polls, the survey found.

Democrats are 10 points more likely to be certain to vote this year than Republicans, compared with their two-point edge in 2018.

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