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The White House can't get its story straight on President Trump's threats to rig the midterms. Earlier this week, Trump explicitly called on Republicans to nationalize the elections a direct threat. After this blew up, Caroline Levitt rushed out to reassure people about Trump's intentions. But then Trump wrecked Levitt's spin by confirming that yes, he does want Republicans to take over the elections. Meanwhile, in the background, Steve Bannon is saying in effect that ICE will in fact be doing voter intimidation in the midterms. And after that, Levitt went out and snapped at a reporter in anger for asking a reasonable question about whether ICE will be at polling places or not. In short, they're all over the place. So how seriously should we take these threats and what should we make of them? We're checking in with election law expert Rick Hassan, who's been warning that the threat is very serious indeed. Rick, nice to have you on. Good to be with you. So let's start with what Trump said earlier this week. Here it is. Quote, the Republicans should say we want to take over. We should take over the voting in at least 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting. Close quote. Rick, what does nationalize the voting actually mean? What does Trump mean by it? And why should we worry about it? So we don't know exactly what Trump means by nationalize the vote. It's possible for the United States to have a system where we run our elections the same in every state. At least Congress would have some powers to do that in Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution. I don't take Trump's statements about nationalizing the vote seriously as an actual proposal, but I do take it very seriously as an indication that he's thinking about how to mess with the midterm elections because I think he's very afraid that Democrats are going to take control of one or both houses of Congress to make the last two years of his term very unpleasant. Well, he certainly has a lot to worry about there. Let's listen to how Caroline Leavitt tried to spin it when asked what Trump meant by all this. What does President Trump mean when he says Republicans ought to naturalize voting? What does that look like in practice? What the President was referring to is the SAVE Act, which is a huge common-sense piece of legislation that Republicans have supported that President Trump is committed to signing into law. It provides very common-sense measures for voting in our country such as voter ID. Rick, I don't think Trump was referring to the SAVE Act when he called for nationalizing the elections. He said Congress, meaning Republicans, should take over the administration of elections in states that he falsely claims have voter fraud in them. And so to your point about how it's not an actual proposal, it's sort of more of an amorphous threat, he did mean it as an amorphous threat, right? And Caroline Leavitt spin his bullshit, isn't it? Oh, sure. They can't get their story straight. Just like they can't get their story straight about why Chelsea Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, at the Fulton raid where they're seizing actual ballots. I mean, there's a lot of reason to be worried about what this administration is going to do, even if there's not going to be some plan to have the federal government actually take over elections. What I've heard Trump say more than once is that he believes that states are the agents of the federal government. They're like administering it for the federal government. And in fact, that's not how our constitutional design is. Our constitutional design gives states the power to run even federal elections unless Congress affirmably overrides. And you may remember back in the summer, Trump issued an executive order about voting. Well, parts of that executive order have been challenged in court. And we've had more than one court say the president has no role to play in the conduct of federal elections. So there are things that he might try to do. There are illegal things he might try to do. But actually nationalizing elections, that's not going to happen by November. Right. And to your point about how Trump has said that the states are the agent of the federal government, Trump actually said that after Leavitt had spun that way, Trump wrecked her spin, in essence. Here's what he said to reporters. And note that when he says, the people behind me, he's talking about Republicans in Congress. Why exactly did you mean when you said that you should nationalize elections, and which 15 states are you talking about? I wouldn't see elections be honest. And if a state can't run an election, I think the people behind me should do something about it. Because, you know, if you think about it, a state is an agent for the federal government in elections. I don't know why the federal government doesn't do them anyway. Take a look at Detroit. Take a look at Pennsylvania. Take a look at Philadelphia. You go take a look at Atlanta. Look at some of the places that have horrible corruption on elections. And the federal government should not allow that. So Rick, there it is again. He's saying that state election administration should be taken over by Republicans in Congress. And he named specific locales that happen to be heavily democratic. Again, even if all this is bullshit and crazy and not going to happen in one way or another, it's disgusting for him to single out specific democratic areas. He's saying explicitly that places that don't vote for him should have their election administration taken over. Can you talk about what you think he could actually do to sort of make good on the general threat of trying to rupture the elections in some sense with the federal government? Yeah, but let me first talk about Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta, which were the places that he singled out. These are places not only that are democratic. He didn't say Madison, Wisconsin. He said places with a large black and large Latino population. So let me talk about the things I'm actually worried about. Not worried about nationalizing elections. I'm not worried about Trump running for a third term in 2028. I am not worried about ICE all over the polling places. You know, the person who said that, Steve Bannon, he's the one who's famous for saying, let's flood the zone with shit and that the media is the enemy. I mean, this is just kind of a lot of disinformation. Here are the things I am worried about. Number one, threatening to put ICE in the streets and generally to have federal observers and what do these threats mean, even if they don't materialize? They deter people from voting. They make it a, oh, I don't want to deal with that hassle. They're demobilizing and they kind of put Democrats in a catch 22 because they want to call it out. But the more they call it out, the more they bring attention to it. So that's a tough spot. The thing I'm most worried about is after the voting is over, after the voting is over, the votes have to be tabulated. There's going to be a lot of mail-in ballots going to have to be processed, especially in places like California or Arizona where they get a lot of mail-in ballots. It takes a long time to get through them. There's going to be a period where you might see that the results show that so far Republicans in the lead for congressional race and it switches to Democrat as more votes are counted. We heard Mike Johnson this week claim that that is evidence of fraud. I mean, that just shows he doesn't understand how elections are actually tabulated. Here's where Trump could maybe have the most impact. He doesn't need to send thousands of troops into the streets. He could maybe get a search warrant like he did in Fulton County last week and go in and try and seize ballot boxes. I mean, once those ballots are out of the control of election officials, we've lost the chain of custody, we can't be confident that the election results would be accurate. He could try to pressure election administrators to throw out categories of ballots or try and get state legislatures to do that. I mean, there's all kinds of things he could do. And, you know, if it looks like Republicans actually are close to controlling the House, there might be a battle in the House itself over who can be seated and what the rules are going to be for determining contested elections. To stay up to date on all the news that you need to know, there's no better place than right here on the DSR network. And there's no better way to enjoy the DSR network than by becoming a member. Members enjoy an ad-free listening experience, access to our Discord community, exclusive content, early episode access, and more. Use code DSR26 for a 25% off discount on signup at thedsrnetwork.com. That's code DSR26 at thedsrnetwork.com slash bye. Thank you and enjoy the show. We're going to be back with more discoveries, like our iced uber vanilla matcha latte. Smooth, creamy, and nutty, balanced with notes of vanilla. It's a treat for the eyes too, with vibrant lilac cues to brighten your spring mood. Hot or iced, there are so many ways to love this stunning serve. Uber vanilla, pouring now at Starbucks. Subject to availability while stocks last. Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run, and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand. Marketing tools that get your products out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time. From startups to scale-ups, online, in-person, and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. Well, I want to come back to those actual threats in a second. First, I want to read the Steve Bannon quote you're talking about. Bannon is very influential in the White House. This week, he said the following quote, we're going to have ice around the poles come November. Close quote. To your point, when Bannon says something like that, the point isn't that they're actually going to send ice to the polling places in November. It's that by saying that they're going to, they're going to try to deter voters who might be frightened of ice from turning out. That's what Bannon's doing there, right? Yeah, and this is an old Republican playbook. I remember back in 2004, this was the Kerry George W. Bush race. The Republicans were threatening to send 35,000 challengers to polling places in Ohio. And Democrats were trying to block them all the way to the Supreme Court, where Justice John Paul Stevens said, everyone should behave, but I'm not issuing an injunction to stop this. And then no one showed up. The whole thing was a big bluff. But all of the talk about this, it really is demobilizing. And, you know, it doesn't take much to convince people not to vote. There's no penalty in this country for not voting. And especially in a race that's not a presidential race, there's less talk about it. And so really for those more casual, less committed, newer voters, why go through the hassle? Yeah, and now that we're seeing ice shoot people in the streets, they're taking on this really outsized, you know, threatening image rightly so in the minds of a whole lot of Americans, including disengaged ones. And so when they hear ice at polling places, it could have a, you know, dissuading effect, even if it's not going to actually happen. I want to play audio of Caroline Leavitt talking about Bannon's threat. Listen to this. Thank you Caroline. Steve Bannon recently said, quote, we're going to have ice around the polls come November. Is that something that the president is considering? That's not something I've ever heard the president consider. No, I'm guaranteed to be American public that ice will not be around polling locations or voting locations in November. I can't guarantee that an ice agent won't be around a polling location in November. I mean, that's frankly a very silly hypothetical question. But what I can tell you is I haven't heard the president discuss any formal plans to put ice outside of polling locations. It's a disingenuous question. Rick, this is pure bullshit from Leavitt. The reporter asked if ice, meaning the agency, will be at polling places. Leavitt says this is disingenuous because she can't guarantee that an ice agent won't be around a polling place. That's just such a garbage way to respond. But what I want to try to bear down on here is that it's not unreasonable in a general sense for people to be looking and reporters to be looking at the sum total of what Trump is saying and what people like Bannon are saying and worry that they actually want to use federal power. In whatever way they can to disrupt the elections. That threat is live and she's trying to tell us that that's not a reasonable thing to fear. Right. It's not a denial denial. What I would have liked her to say is, of course, we're not going to be sending federal agents to deter voting. We're going to make sure that voting is free and fair like it always is in the United States. Well, you can't say that if you work for Donald Trump, though, can you? Right. So, you know, that's also part of what's going on here. Some of this is performative for Donald Trump. In fact, my kind of optimistic read on the raid of the Fulton County election offices is that it was just a show. So Donald Trump thinks that people are doing something and that it's not the pessimistic story would be a dress rehearsal for 2026. Well, another good example of that is the arrest of Don Lemon, the former CNN reporter who was just arrested for reporting on an ICE protest in a church. That was clearly all about pleasing the audience of one. Right. I mean, when you have somebody who has, I would say, an obsession about these things that you get, people surrounding him or a cow towing, they're just trying to do whatever they can to please him. And so another example of this is what we saw with the Fulton County raid where Chelsea Gabbard, who's the director of National Intelligence, was present at the raid. They've been giving different explanations for why this would be. It's very odd for someone who is supposed to be looking at foreign intelligence to be involved in some kind of domestic law enforcement operation. But in some ways it makes sense. Gabbard has a record of being a conspiracy theorist like Trump. Also, Gabbard is kind of a non-interventionist. Maybe when Trump was sending people into Venezuela or talking about bombing Iran, he sent her off on a voter fraud goose chase. And again, I'm trying to come up with some optimistic ways of understanding this rather than are we going to be using our National Intelligence Services to try to interfere with the conduct of elections in 2026. Well, look, I don't want to joke about this, but just for a second, they're trying to give Chelsea Gabbard something to do. Let's face it. I mean, if you're actually serious about stealing an election and pulling off a really complicated operation, you don't send Chelsea Gabbard in. You know what I mean? Absolutely. I do think that she has not been proven to be a serious person. And so this is not a very serious task that she is being given by Trump. Well, to return to something you said earlier, there is a very serious dimension to all this. The comic relief around Chelsea Gabbard aside, tell us a little bit more about this potential scenario in which federal law enforcement seizes ballot boxes after the voting. What would happen? What would be the legal recourse? How would it all unfold? So you may remember back in 2020 when Trump lost the election to Joe Biden, he was president at the time. And news stories leaked out that he was considering seizing the ballot boxes. And I bring this up only because recently Trump commented, I think this was last month, he said that he regretted not seizing the ballot boxes. So this to me seems like a live operational thing that could happen, more than thousands of ICE agents in the streets of Detroit. What would it look like? What would actually happen? Can you walk us through the details? Imagine that the 2026 midterm elections are close and in places where there is a swing district, we don't know if a Democrat or Republican won a house seat. Trump says there's fraud, tries to get a search warrant to seize the ballots that have not been fully tabulated yet to announce the winner. And so that the federal government can take over elections to come back to where we started this conversation and actually count the ballots, he could say. That would require getting a federal court to issue a search warrant. There would have to be probable cause of a criminal violation. Seems very hard to show that, given what we know about how elections run. But I'm not sure how Trump was able to have his FBI agents get the search warrant in this in this Fulton County case. But if they can come in once they take the ballots, once they'd be out of the hands of election officials out of that chain of custody, we can't be confident in the outcome of the election in that area. So it's going to be very, very messy. So what could be done about it? I think states and local governments need to be prepared for this. I would suggest trying to get injunctions against the federal government to keep them away. I would suggest that lawyers for voting rights groups and Democrats be prepared to go to court. I mean, it may take people in the streets protecting the offices where ballots are being tabulated. Make the Brooks Brothers riot from the 2000 disputed election where some people were trying to storm an office where there were recounting ballots in the Bush versus Gorries. That would look very tame compared to what we might see in 2026. Well, those warnings strike me as really, really important. And if you think about it, that really could be what Trump means when he throws around words like nationalized to describe our elections. Folks, if you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to check out Rick Hassan's blog. It's at electionlawblog.org. He's one of the best out there at analyzing all this stuff. Rick, really good to have you on, man. Thanks. Well, hopefully we could talk about something more cheerful next time. I hope so.
