President Donald Trump seems poised to escalate his targeting of federal elections, saying on a recent podcast interview that the Republican Party should “take over” the election process in at least 15 states.
“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over.’ We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many — 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” Trump told “The Dan Bongino Show” podcast, hosted by his former Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino.
Trump’s suggestion that elections, which are constitutionally controlled by states, should be overhauled by the federal government quickly drew outrage from leaders who also expressed concern for its implications for Black voters.
“This serves as yet another reminder that the Trump Administration is only looking to exhaust our nation with these deplorable and unconstitutional antics in hopes that we will grow tired and concede,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said in a statement to theGrio. “Unfortunate for them, we are wide awake, and we will never surrender something our people fought, bled, and died for. We’ve taken Trump to court before – and we’ve won, even in the Supreme Court. If necessary, we’ll take him to court again, and we’ll win again.”
Since losing the 2020 presidential election, President Trump has repeatedly spread falsehoods and disproven conspiracies that his defeat was the result of mass voter fraud committed by Democrats in various states across the country. In an unprecedented move last week, the Trump administration seized 2020 election ballots and other materials in Fulton County, Georgia, where a majority of registered voters are Black and Latino.
“We’ve seen this pattern of targeting Black voters for years — racially gerrymandered maps, a Trump DOJ determined to gut the Voting Rights Act, and relentless attacks on mail-in voting that many Black voters rely on,” Democratic strategist Marcus W. Robinson told theGrio. “By calling for Republicans to ‘take over’ elections, Trump is doubling down on a calculated effort to erase Black political power.”
In a letter sent to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday, Georgia Democrats U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock and U.S. Reps. Nikema Williams and Lucy McBath said Trump’s “consistent spreading of misinformation and dangerous conspiracy theories about the 2020 election fundamentally undermines the electoral process, endangers election workers, and erodes public trust in our democracy.” They added, “This unprecedented seizure only heightens those concerns.”
Trump’s recent remarks about nationalizing elections in at least 15 states, but not all, suggest he embraces a haphazard approach to election oversight, perhaps politically targeting only states with Democratic governors.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday that the president was referring to the SAVE Act, a Republican-proposed bill that would require voters to present ID and proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. However, the bill does not explain the president’s suggestion that only 15 states should be nationalized rather than all states. Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the SAVE Act “Jim Crow 2.0.”
“This follows a very long trend line again, of the president using his force, using abuse of power, using the federal government to enact his political will,” said former Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is running for the Democratic nomination for governor. He told theGrio, “It’s no different than deploying the National Guard as President to different communities…the President has demonstrated so many times that he cannot be trusted. He has demonstrated so many times that this has nothing to do with the interest of safety, the interest of integrity, or the interest of advancing the cause of the majority of Americans.”
As Republicans stare down a potential wave of defeats in November’s midterm elections–something even Trump alluded to amid fears of being impeached–critics of the president’s targeting of voting rights say he is simply abusing the presidency to shift the narrative.
“The reality is Republicans are losing election after election because they’ve failed to offer a winning policy agenda. They are setting voters back, and we know when Trump and Republicans can’t win fair elections, they try to rig the system to cling to power at any cost,” said Robinson, the Democratic strategist.
Barnes said Trump can “see the tea leaves” and “recognizes his deep unpopularity,” telling theGrio, “Instead of actually doing what’s right for people, instead of actually showing up and getting to work to solve our very real problems, he would rather change the way that elections are administered so that he can continue doing the bidding that harms a majority of Americans and enriches himself.”
