President Donald Trump is facing rebuke after recently implying the United States should no longer hold elections, just days after he warned Republicans he could soon face impeachment if his party loses control of Congress.
During an interview with Reuters, Trump expressed frustrations yet again about the likelihood of major Republican losses in November’s general elections.
“It’s some deep psychological thing, but when you win the presidency, you don’t win the midterms,” Trump said. The president then touted his administration’s perceived accomplishments, telling the news wire, “When you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.”
During a Thursday White House press briefing, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the president was simply “joking.”
“The president was simply joking. He was saying we’re doing such a great job [and] we’re doing everything the American people thought, maybe we should just keep rolling. But he was speaking facetiously,” said Leavitt.
Despite the president’s spokesperson dismissing the remarks as a joke, civil rights and voting rights leaders say it is no laughing matter.
“Saying we ‘shouldn’t even have an election’ is how Donald Trump is testing the public’s tolerance for authoritarianism. When democracy is treated as optional, it is Black communities who pay the price first and hardest,” Nadine Smith, president and CEO of Color Of Change, told theGrio. “We know exactly what this is, and we won’t wait politely to be stripped of our freedoms.”
NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement provided to theGrio, “If your record as president is truly popular with the American people, you should have nothing to fear from the upcoming election. But of course, Trump should have a lot to fear, because nothing he’s doing is popular, from tanking the economy, weaponizing federal agents against innocent people, invading sovereign nations, and covering-up pedophiles’ crimes.”
The civil rights leader added, “In the United States, elections are run by the states, not the White House, so regardless of Donald Trump’s ego, the American people will vote, and they will reject his authoritarian attempt to seize control of their government.”
This isn’t the first time Trump has floated the idea of not holding an election in the United States. While campaigning for president in 2024, Trump told a group of white Christians, “In four years, you won’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not gonna have to vote.”
“I put nothing past what Trump may attempt to do,” said Bishop William Barber II, a longtime civil rights organizer and president of Repairers of the Breach.
Barber told theGrio, “He really, I think, wants to try, if he could, to serve another term. He really wants to tear open the Constitution.”
He added, “He believes he’s a gift from God. He has that kind of Messiah type, you know, attitude, religious nationalists have pushed that in his mind, told him that’s who he is. He thinks he is the quote, unquote, salvation for the country.”
