President Donald Trump addressed the nation tonight, in what turned out to be a surprisingly needy request for people to yell at Congress to get his currently stalled Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act passed. Although he worked pretty tightly from the teleprompter for once—only occasionally riffing in a few extra “greats” or the observation that 38 days is “much more than a month”—Trump did get in a few hits at his favorite targets as he delivered the speech. Among other things, that meant accusing NBC and ABC—both of whom declined to broadcast the address live, instead shunting it to their online broadcasts—of being part of a “plot” to make American elections less secure, calling for both networks to have their broadcast licenses revoked.
Not, of course, that this is anything especially new for Trump, whose FCC has gone especially hard after ABC over the last two years, calling for it to re-apply for all its broadcast licenses early, in a fairly unprecedented use of the organization’s regulatory powers. It’s not clear if Trump’s address (which also accused “rogue bureaucrats” of colluding with China to make American elections more vulnerable, and danced around explicitly reiterating Trump’s old claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him) will lead to renewed action from Commissioner Brendan Carr, or if Trump just calls for news networks he doesn’t like to have their broadcast licenses revoked as a sort of verbal tic at this point.
The core of the address—which our more paranoid neurons note seemed to exist mostly so the White House could later point to it if the elections for the 2026 midterms turn out unfavorably—was a series of documents Trump and his team had decided to declassify, purporting that China had hacked U.S. voter records, and that members of the “Deep State” had covered it up. That included an especial focus on voting machines—”these terrible machines,” in Trump speak—which, again, sure feels like the setup for a very dark punchline if/when Trump’s supporters lose their majorities in Congress in November. In any case, the address was surprisingly (if relievingly) light on concrete accusations or plans for action, and instead just asked people to please just beg their Congressional representatives for the SAVE Act, possibly because Trump’s team doesn’t appear to have found any gigantic bombshells they could declassify to justify more overt actions at this exact moment.
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