He Said The Emmys Were Rigged, Too.

Fourteen years. Every election. Including the ones he won. Tonight, it had the FBI Director sitting in the front row.

He Said The Emmys Were Rigged, Too.

Fourteen years. Every election. Including the ones he won. Tonight, it had the FBI Director sitting in the front row.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #973: Thursday, July 16th, 2026 11:50 PM CST

I want to tell you about an awards show.

Years ago, before any of this…a reality television program called The Apprentice kept not winning Emmys. Year after year. And the man who hosted it had an explanation ready…every time.

The Emmys were rigged.

All politics. Fixed. Not on the level.

Now…hold that in your head. A gold statue. A category nobody outside Los Angeles thinks about. No ballots. No voters. No count. Nothing to steal.

Rigged.

Because tonight…that same man stood in the East Room of the White House…in front of the Vice President of the United States…the Director of the FBI…the Secretary of State…the Acting Attorney General…and the Secretary of Homeland Security…

…and told you your elections are rigged, too.

The Thing Nobody Says Out Loud

Here’s what every talking head on your television got wrong tonight.

They’re all arguing about whether he’s right.

Wrong argument. Wrong century. Let me show you the actual pattern…and I want you to count with me.

2012.

Barack Obama gets reelected. Trump calls it a total sham. Says the machines wiped ballots for Mitt Romney. Says dead people voted.

2016.

Iowa. He loses the caucus to Ted Cruz by three points. His response: Cruz didn’t win it, he stole it. Demands the results be nullified or the whole thing run again.

Cruz’s answer that week is still the best sentence anybody has ever aimed at this man: it isn’t stealing when the voters vote against you.

2016.

Colorado. Loses. Rigged.

2016.

August, Columbus, Ohio. Three months before a single ballot is cast…he tells a rally the election is going to be rigged. People will walk in and vote ten times.

2016.

October. The election is absolutely being rigged.

2016.

November. He wins.

And claims millions of people voted illegally.

Read that again.

He won… and the election was still rigged.

2020.

August. Before voting starts: the only way we lose is if it’s rigged.

2020.

Election night. A fraud on the American public. Frankly, we did win this election. Stop the counting.

2020.

After. Dozens of lawsuits. Thrown out for no evidence…no standing…some by judges he appointed. Republican-run audits in Arizona and Georgia confirm the count. His own Department of Homeland Security calls it the most secure election in American history. His own Attorney General says there was no fraud on any scale that would have changed it.

2026.

He says California rigged the Los Angeles mayor’s race against Spencer Pratt.

Spencer Pratt.

So Now Do The Math

He said it when he lost.

He said it when he won.

He said it before people voted.

He said it about an awards show.

Fourteen years. Every possible configuration of outcome. Same conclusion…every single time.

Friend, that is not a finding. That’s a reflex.

You cannot falsify it. There is no election result that would cause this man to say “the system worked.” A loss is fraud. A win is fraud with an asterisk. A statuette going to somebody else is fraud.

Which brings us to the only question that actually matters tonight, and I promise you nobody on cable news is going to ask it:

What happens when a fourteen-year reflex gets handed the Justice Department?

What Actually Happened Tonight

Now pay attention, because the media is about to get this wrong in the other direction.

He did not say China changed votes. Fox News itself reported that. He was more careful than that. Much more careful.

Here’s what he actually did…and it’s clever as hell:

He declassified a pile of intelligence assessments…and posted them on whitehouse.gov. And one of them says America’s adversaries “have the capability to compromise US election infrastructure.”

Capability.

Not did. Could.

That’s a threat assessment. That’s a fire marshal…saying a building could burn. Every security agency on earth writes documents like that…it’s literally their job.

He read it to you…as if it were a police report.

And…then…having never once claimed a vote was changed…he closed with this: “we can never watch a stolen election again.”

You see it? He gets the verdict…without ever having to prove the crime. He hands you a maybe…and lets you walk out with a did.

That is not the work of confused men and women. That is craftsmanship.

But Here’s The Part That Should Straighten Your Spine

For fourteen years, all of this was talk. Tweets. Rally lines. Lawsuits that lost, and lost, and lost.

Tonight it had machinery.

Tonight…he ordered the Office of the Director of National Intelligence…the Justice Department…the FBI…and the CIA to investigate the officials who said 2020 was secure. To fire them. And to file criminal charges.

The FBI Director was in the room. The Acting Attorney General was in the room…a man whose own confirmation hearing was happening this week.

He ordered Homeland Security to tell every state to “remove all ineligible voters” from the rolls. Immediately.

The DHS Secretary briefs the country tomorrow morning.

He demanded Congress pass the SAVE America Act…photo ID…proof of citizenship… and no mail ballots…except for illness…disability…military service…or travel.

And…when he noticed that NBC and ABC hadn’t carried his speech…he said their licenses should be revoked.

The reflex is fourteen years old. The state power behind it is nine hours old.

And Now The Thing I’ve Been Trying To Tell You Since July 2nd

Two weeks ago I asked you to remember one date. Some of you wrote back. Some of you probably forgot.

Remember it now.

September 30, 2026.

That’s the day the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act dies. The boring 2015 law that lets security firms…election vendors…and the federal government swap threat intelligence fast…without a platoon of lawyers slowing everything down. The neighborhood watch of American cybersecurity.

Thirty-four days before you vote.

Tonight…the President of the United States stood in the East Room for an hour…and told you our election infrastructure is a five-alarm national emergency. Voter files stolen. Machines exposed. Foreign governments circling.

He promised to work with states to patch the holes before the midterms.

The law that makes that work legally possible expires on September 30. His party runs Congress.

He never mentioned it. Not once. Not one syllable.

He spent an hour screaming that the house is on fire.

And he never told you he’s letting the fire department’s charter run out on September 30th.

Now…maybe that’s an oversight. Maybe it’s the most convenient oversight in the history of the American republic. I don’t know, and neither does anybody else…and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

But I know this:

If the machinery that lets somebody independently verify a claim of foreign interference is switched off five weeks before an election…

…then in November…the only voice left telling you what happened will be his.

No trust…no greatness. That’s what he said tonight.

He’s half right. Without trust…you don’t have a country.

The question is…who benefits when it’s gone.

The Good News. Because There Is Some.

Before you crawl under your desk, let me tell you what the doom-scrollers won’t:

2024 held.

Cyber probes. Hoax bomb threats. Full-blown foreign influence operations. Not one changed an outcome.

The courts are working.

Dozens of 2020 suits died on the evidence…many in front of judges he picked himself. A federal judge just blocked Texas’s new map. The mail-in voting order is being litigated right now by lawyers who know what they’re doing.

And the people who run your elections

…in red counties and blue counties, in Missouri and Michigan and Maine…are the most stress-tested public servants alive. They ran an election through a pandemic. They ran one through 2020. They did not blink.

The system is not fragile.

But…it is not self-maintaining, either. It holds…because thousands of ordinary people do unglamorous work on time.

The date I just gave you is that work…with a countdown stamped on it.

So Here’s What I Want You To Do

Three things. Ten minutes. Costs you nothing.

One.

Go read the documents yourself. whitehouse.gov. Right now.

And…when you read them, look for one word: “capability.” Every time an assessment says an adversary could do something, ask yourself why a President described it as something they did. You don’t need a security clearance for that. You need a dictionary.

Two.

Bookmark your state and county election office. Tonight. Not in October. The official ones.

And burn this into your skull: election night will not settle it. The Supreme Court has upheld counting ballots that arrive up to five days after Election Day. When the count runs long…and it will…that is not fraud. That is the law…working exactly as written by the Court he helped build.

The people who need you frightened are counting on you forgetting that.

Three.

September 30. CISA 2015. Pick up your phone.

He told you tonight to call your representatives about the SAVE Act. Fine. Do that too, if you want…it’s your phone.

But…while you’ve got them, ask the question nobody in that East Room asked:

“If our elections are so vulnerable…why is your Congress letting the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act die on September 30th?”

That is not a red question. It is not a blue question. Security professionals want that law renewed. Business groups want it. Election vendors across the spectrum want it.

It’s a keep the neighborhood watch running question.

And…I would very much like to know why the man who spent an hour tonight telling you the barbarians are at the gate…

…forgot to mention he’s letting the gate rust off its hinges in seventy-six days.

That’s it. That’s the whole pitch.

No panic. No conspiracy theories. Just a calendar…a countdown…and a country that works best when its citizens actually know what time it is.

#HoldFast

Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. In 2012 he said the machines were rigged. In 2016 he said Iowa was stolen. Then he won…and said millions voted illegally anyway.

In 2020 he said it before the voting started. Tonight…he said it with the Director of the FBI sitting six feet away and the Justice Department taking notes.

The story never changes. Only the size of the gun in the room.

Set a reminder for September 30.

Sources

Tonight’s address

• Full transcript — President Trump’s Primetime Address to the Nation, July 16, 2026

• The declassified documents — whitehouse.gov (posted during the speech; read them yourself)

• Fox News: Trump releases declassified election intelligence, says reveals “shocking vulnerabilities” — the East Room attendee list, and Fox’s own confirmation that he did not claim China altered vote totals

• Newsweek: Trump Gives Presidential Address Today: What He’s Said About Rigged Elections — Reuters and CBS reporting that the intelligence under review does not show China manipulated votes; earlier assessments found no interference with 2020 election infrastructure or vote counting

• CNBC: Trump is set to deliver an election-focused national address tonight

• Fox News: Trump keeps ‘really big’ address under wraps — July 16, 2026

• Fox News: Trump holds Washington hostage over SAVE Act as midterm clock ticks on GOP control

• Stocktonia: Trump can’t stop talking about election-rigging, the thing that trips him up most — the Los Angeles mayoral claim

The fourteen-year record

• ABC News: Trump has longstanding history of calling elections ‘rigged’ if he doesn’t like the results — 2012, 2016 Iowa, 2016 general

• ABC News: A timeline of Donald Trump’s election denial claims — the Emmys, the 2012 “total sham,” Cruz’s response, election night 2020

• PolitiFact: Donald Trump’s baseless claims about ‘rigged’ elections — August 2016, the Columbus rally

• LegalClarity: Trump Rigged Election Claims: Lawsuits, Cases, and Facts — the “millions voted illegally” claim after winning in 2016; California’s count timeline

The September 30 problem

• Federal News Network: DHS officials warn about growing shutdown backlogs — CISA legally barred from election outreach during the shutdown, in their own words, at a Senate hearing

• Federal News Network: Trump signs bill funding DHS, ending record shutdown — the 76-day lapse

• Wikipedia: 2026 United States federal government shutdowns — dates and scope

• PBS NewsHour, July 15, 2026 — the Clayton confirmation hearing

• PBS NewsHour: White House says Trump was referring to SAVE Act when he advocated nationalizing elections