As President Trump wrapped up a prime-time address in which he rattled off ominous and at times outlandish assertions about U.S. election vulnerabilities, he repeated his demand that Congress pass strict voting restrictions that have been stalled in the Senate.<\/p>\n
That plea, which Mr. Trump implied was the reason behind the Thursday night speech, appeared to have landed with a whimper among Republicans on Capitol Hill and in campaigns around the country. Most had little to say in its aftermath about an issue the president called among the most urgent facing the nation.<\/p>\n
Democrats immediately seized on Mr. Trump\u2019s address with a frenzy of talking points to accuse him of trying to undermine the upcoming midterm elections. But the speech drew a muted response from members of the president\u2019s party. He has spent months trying to pressure them into action on the election overhaul measure, which would require proof of citizenship to register and photo ID to vote and would severely limit voting by mail<\/a>.<\/p>\n Though Mr. Trump\u2019s most devoted loyalists in Congress quickly repeated his call to pass the bill known as the SAVE America Act \u2014 demands they have been making for months \u2014 most other Republicans stayed quiet, and at least one skeptic indicated that the speech had not moved the needle.<\/p>\n \u201cIf it was meant to influence people like me, it didn\u2019t get me there,\u201d Senator Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican who has publicly opposed the measure, said in an interview on Friday. \u201cWhat we heard last night was there are foreign interests trying to influence us, but they weren\u2019t effective at basically hacking into our system. I don\u2019t think there was much last night that would change views on whether we should pass the SAVE Act.\u201d<\/p>\n Broadly, it was not clear that Mr. Trump\u2019s message was resonating beyond the far right of the Republican Party that has long unquestioningly echoed his baseless and unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud.<\/p>\n Republicans on the campaign trail did not seize on Mr. Trump\u2019s remarks, instead focusing on issues they perceived to be of greater import. And conservative media outlets found other stories as compelling, if not more so, as Mr. Trump\u2019s remarks about election security<\/a>.<\/p>\n On Friday morning, \u201cFox & Friends,\u201d the program that is usually a megaphone for Mr. Trump\u2019s messages, shunted aside the speech. Instead, the hosts opened the three-hour show by highlighting the war in Iran, the wildfire smoke coming from Canada, flooding in Texas and the latest on the cyclospora parasite.<\/p>\n In a later segment about a speech<\/a> Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave about far-left terrorism, Fox News\u2019s Charlie Hurt credited Mr. Trump for raising concerns about China: \u201cIt\u2019s not until President Trump came along and said, \u2018Look, this is a real issue. It\u2019s at our shores and we need to confront it.\u2019\u201d But he did not directly address election security.<\/p>\n Other right-leaning outlets took a similar approach. By midday Friday, for instance, Newsmax\u2019s website was highlighting the clash over the Strait of Hormuz, pushing Mr. Trump\u2019s speech below that conflict and the political fight in South Carolina to succeed the deceased Senator Lindsey Graham.<\/p>\n The reaction seemed to reflect disagreements among Republicans over whether Mr. Trump\u2019s almost single-minded focus on his elections bill might help or harm their chances in November\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n \u201cRe-litigating 2020 is a mistake,\u201d said Representative Don Bacon, a retiring moderate Republican from Nebraska. \u201cIt\u2019s a losing issue, and most people that are reasonable and aren\u2019t so clouded by partisanship know it\u2019s baloney.\u201d<\/p>\n The lack of enthusiasm highlighted just how entrenched the political debate over Mr. Trump\u2019s claims about election integrity have become, and how unwilling a Republican-controlled Congress has been to heed his command to act on them.<\/p>\n