Donald Trump Already Knows the 2026 Election Is "Rigged"

"On Monday, President Trump phoned into the podcast of his former deputy F.B.I. director, Dan Bongino, and announced that he wanted to "nationalize" American elections in fifteen "crooked" states-he didn't say which ones-ahead of the upcoming midterms, in which most people in Washington, D.C., these days, including, apparently, Trump himself, expect Republicans to suffer widespread losses. A federal takeover of elections was necessary, Trump said, because he was the real winner of the 2020 election and also because "these people"-he didn't say which people, but one can guess-"were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally.""

"When asked about the President's idea, House Speaker Mike Johnson, the Louisiana Republican, who owes whatever tenuous hold he currently has on his job to Trump, didn't say what any states'-rights-loving Southern Republican would have said in the past: Are you crazy? Instead, channelling the boss, he complained about blue-state election practices. "We had three House Republican candidates who were ahead on Election Day in the last election cycle, and every time a new tranche of ballots came in, they just magically whittled away until their leads were lost," he said. "It looks on its face to be fraudulent.""

"Steve Bannon, the former Trump strategist turned public MAGA ideologue, was even less subtle. "We're going to have ICE surround the polls come November," he said on his "War Room" podcast. Addressing Democrats, he added, "We're not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again.""

President Trump called to "nationalize" elections in fifteen states, claiming illegal voting by unspecified groups and asserting he was the true 2020 winner. House Speaker Mike Johnson echoed concerns about "blue-state" ballot counts, alleging instances where late-arriving ballots erased Republican leads and calling those outcomes suspicious. Steve Bannon advocated using ICE to surround polls and warned Democrats against "stealing the country." The proposals aim to federalize or intimidate electoral processes despite constitutional and legal barriers. The rhetoric increases the likelihood of widespread public doubt about midterm outcomes and seeks to preemptively delegitimize unfavorable results.

Read at The New Yorker