United States President Donald Trump is promising “really big news” in a rare primetime address on Thursday night, though he won’t say exactly what it is.

The surprise speech was announced on Tuesday. But when pressed by reporters about what he planned to talk about, Trump only revealed that the speech would be about elections and “a couple of other things”.

“It doesn’t get bigger, because without free and fair elections, you don’t have a country,” he told journalists in the Oval Office on Tuesday.

Asked to elaborate, Trump said he wanted to “save it” for the speech. “We’ll be discussing other things, too,” he added. “It’s going to be a very big announcement.”

The White House has since confirmed that the address will focus on elections, including information related to the 2020 presidential election, which Trump has falsely claimed he won.

The speech is also expected to discuss what the White House describes as vulnerabilities in US voting machines.

Trump’s speech comes three and a half months before the November 3 midterm elections. At stake is control over the US Congress. Currently, Trump’s Republican Party holds slim majorities in both of Congress’s chambers.

Critics fear Trump may use his primetime address to erode voter confidence in the upcoming elections, or to assert federal influence over election administration, which is run at the state and local level.

Democrats have warned against giving Trump airtime for his unsubstantiated claims. “Trump is going to use a primetime address to stoke misleading claims about our elections in order to justify interfering in our midterms,” Senator Mark Warner wrote on social media on Wednesday.

Source: www.aljazeera.com