Donald Trump has announced that he is delivering a speech Thursday night, when he will claim to reveal newly classified information about foreign interference in the 2020 election. Around the same time, a viral but very dodgy report emerged that Trump was going to declare that the two Democratic senators from Georgia, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, are “illegitimate”:
NEWS:
President Trump is planning to announce that Georgia’s two senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, are illegitimate because of fraud, a well-placed source in Georgia tells us. Announcement could come as soon as tonight. https://t.co/1bchO5wfGe
— Washington Reporter (@DC_Reporter) July 13, 2026
This is wrong in all sorts of ways. The president has no power to declare senators “illegitimate.” Both were elected in 2020, winning runoffs during the period when Trump was denying his 2020 loss weeks earlier, giving the Democrats Senate control during the early part of the Biden presidency. But Warnock has since been re-elected, while Ossoff is running again this year and expected to win. And beyond that, “Washington Reporter” went on to somewhat back off, stating that “President Trump’s speech will not focus on Georgia’s 2020 elections. ” But not before the original post notched nearly 13 million views on X.
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Ossoff has since capitalized on this, calling a news conference on Tuesday. And according to The Daily Beast, Ossoff dropped some gossip: He shared what the Republican senators really think of the president that they back in public.
Ossoff: “We understand the president may be threatening to declare sitting senators illegitimate. If that’s the course of action he pursues, he’s calling Georgia voters illegitimate … he was humiliated and furious as a committed lifelong racist that it was Black voters in… pic.twitter.com/JO2VQBzP0Q
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 14, 2026
“I don’t know of Republican colleagues who agree with the president on this. Privately, most elected Republicans in this building think the president has lost it and is dooming them to dismal losses this fall,” Ossoff told the press. And he went on to rip his Republican opponent, Mike Collins, who has long been a 2020 election denier.
“Let’s see how Mike Collins handles this now,” Ossoff continued. “Mike Collins launched his general election campaign doubling down on 2020 election denialism. Now he not only has to defend doubling health insurance premiums for more than a million Georgians—he has to defend these conspiracy theories about the 2020 election that Georgia voters have rejected time and time again.”
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
