Donald Trump has been claiming since 2020 that that year’s election was stolen from him. There have been all sorts of claims about how it was done, from the “2000 Mules” ballot-harvesting conspiracy to foreign interference by various countries to claims involving “rigged” voting machines. None of the claims, not a single one, has ever stood up to scrutiny, nor has any had any success in court.
On Thursday night, Trump delivered a national address, claiming that he would share newly declassified evidence about foreign interference in the election he lost. Most networks did not carry the speech, and one that did, Fox News, had its anchors say afterward that it could not confirm at least one of his claims.
“Fox News has not seen that evidence yet and is not in a position to evaluate the accuracy of the president’s statement and claims,” a Fox anchor said on the air after Trump’s speech, which claimed that China compromised voter information in 2020.
“Fox News has not seen the evidence yet and is not in a position to evaluate the accuracy of the president’s statement and claims” pic.twitter.com/AOpcPjyNze
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 17, 2026
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It’s reminiscent of the Dominion Voting Systems case, when the voting machine company filed a nine-figure defamation suit against Fox News for repeatedly airing claims that Dominion had participated in election conspiracies. That led to a $787 million settlement in 2023 and Tucker Carlson’s departure from Fox.
Is there any truth to what Trump claimed on Thursday night?
“Though the documents are newly declassified, they largely discuss vulnerabilities that have been known for years and election officials around the country have tried to address,” CNN wrote of the documents released Thursday.
“None of the declassified information supports the claim that any previous election results — including the 2020 presidential contest that Trump lost — were manipulated by foreign interference or fraud in a way that would’ve changed the outcome. Instead, White House officials have framed the disclosures not as an attempt to relitigate past elections, but rather as an effort to address vulnerabilities ahead of November’s midterm elections. That’s despite the fact that the second Trump administration has shuttered many federal organizations that were tracking and publicizing foreign influence campaigns.”
There are, indeed, no smoking guns showing that Trump really won in 2020. Other documents, meanwhile, show the opposite of what he has long claimed:
Docs released tonight echo those released already. Trump’s speech conveniently left out that the biggest election interference came from Russia and was designed to get him another term. This is from tonight’s batch pic.twitter.com/M0wVJLNcHt
— Sam Stein (@samstein) July 17, 2026
Meanwhile, as Mediaite noted, the following morning, Fox & Friends did not mention Thursday night at all.
Photo courtesy of an X screenshot.
