Trump’s ‘big news’ speech only confirmed his own midterm crisis

Updated July 17, 2026 — 11:17am,first published 10:56am

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President Donald Trump addressed the American people and the world (Friday AEST) to announce a new war he is waging as commander-in-chief. In advance of the speech, he said he wanted to talk about voting machines in US elections and, “We’ll have a couple of other things to say, also. But I’d rather save it. But it’s really big news.”

The big news was China. Trump effectively indicted the government of China, and by implication its president and good friend, Xi Jinping, for the “election intelligence nightmare” perpetrated against America’s democracy. “They fought like hell to keep Donald Trump from winning.” Trump’s speech was laced with anger and retribution. How is the Trump-Xi relationship?

Years of investigations by the intelligence community have shown decisively that there has been no effective election interference by foreign nations or rigging of ballots or voter fraud. Massive vote recounts and audits of the 2020 election occurred in the swing states that determined Joe Biden’s victory. But Trump is obsessed with the 2020 election. No president, much less this president who was elected twice, has attacked the integrity of US elections. Six years later, Trump’s obsession with his loss to Biden is........

© WA Today