White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday said that President Donald Trump’s speech tonight on the integrity of U.S. elections “will shock you.”
Leavitt said she believes media outlets have “refused to acknowledge that tens of millions of Americans across the country share the concerns of this president about the sanctity of our elections.”
The findings that Trump is “going to reveal in this speech … will shock you if you have an honest eye,” the press secretary said, without going further into details about what the speech might entail.
“Everything he is saying will be backed up by facts and by evidence,” Leavitt added.
The United States “should have the safest and most secure elections in the history of the world,” Leavitt also remarked. “And what the president will be speaking about tonight will show you that perhaps that is not the case, and we need to make some adjustments moving forward,” including passing the SAVE America Act.
Leavitt also was critical of news outlets “reporting and misreporting about what the president will say” in the address and cautioned people to not “jump ahead to conclusions.”
“Our country has to shape up,” the president said in the Oval Office on Tuesday as he met with Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi. “Without free and fair elections, you don’t have a country.”
Also Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters he didn’t know what Trump was going to speak about and that Republicans “are focused on the 2026 election.”
The SAVE America Act, or Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, is an election security measure backed by Trump that would mandate that individuals provide proof of U.S. citizenship, including a passport, birth certificate, or REAL ID.
It would also mandate strict photo ID requirements at polls, include more rules around absentee voting, require states to actively verify the citizenship of voters, and other changes. The GOP-backed measure was passed in the House earlier this week s part of a funding package, although it has stalled in the Senate despite Republicans having a majority.
For months, Trump has pushed for the bill to be passed, but Thune on several occasions has publicly said he doesn’t have the votes to pass the measure or remove the Senate’s legislative filibuster rule.
Judge Denise J. Casper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, in part, wrote that the Constitution does not grant the president “any specific powers over elections.”
For years, Trump has said that the 2020 presidential election was rigged in favor of his opponent, Democrat Joe Biden. In the immediate aftermath of that contest, his legal team filed multiple lawsuits against states where his campaign said election fraud occurred.