Senator John Fetterman (D-Pa.) on Sunday, July 19th, 2026, called on former President Donald Trump to "do something positive" instead of revisiting claims about the 2020 presidential election. Fetterman praised Trump's recent primetime speech on election security but expressed frustration over the focus on past elections.

Speaking to CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union," Fetterman said, "I don't know why the president is dragging up all this stuff. You're the president. It's deeply unhelpful and that distracts important things, especially like the Iranian war right now."

Trump's Thursday speech included assertions that recently declassified documents suggest China interfered in the 2020 election by acquiring over 200 million U.S. voter files. However, a 2021 intelligence community report concluded with "high confidence" that China did not interfere in the election but sought to undermine Trump's reelection.

Fetterman, who was Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor during the 2020 election, affirmed that the election was "absolutely secure, fair and accurate." He stated, "That was the voice of Pennsylvania, and they picked Joe Biden in 2020, that's a fact. Now, until I see evidence that over 25 million migrants that are voted or registered to vote, then yeah, that would make me reconsider some of these things."

Supporting this stance, Senator Mark Warner wrote on social platform X that intelligence agencies unanimously agreed China did not attempt to change any votes in 2020, noting that suggestions China tried to sway voters have been public knowledge since 2021.

Some Republican lawmakers criticized Trump's speech. Representative Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said after the speech that the issue was not that elections were "stolen," adding that Republicans "won the damn elections."

Sources