The Art of the Steal

President Donald Trump seemingly cannot let the 2020 election go. Despite winning convincingly in 2024, including, for the first time in his political career, the popular vote, he remains fixated on the idea that he also won four years prior, against former President Joe Biden. 

Now, a year into his second term, Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has reportedly dedicated months to finding new “evidence” that 2020 was stolen from him (it was not).

Trump’s continued preoccupation, along with a raid on an Atlanta-area elections office last month, has raised concerns about what Trump could have planned for the 2026 midterms this November. As CNN’s Marshall Cohen told Today, Explained co-host Astead Herndon in a recent episode, Trump’s desire to avoid another defeat could result in a “worst-case scenario”: “He might try to put his thumb on the scales, use government powers, use federal authorities to try to influence the process,” Cohen said.

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

What has Trump been saying about the midterms? 

He made a lot of news just a few days ago when he went farther than he’s ever gone before. Trump told a radio host that: 

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.

He said 15 states. He didn’t say which ones, but we can guess. He said that he was talking about the states that have the big “fraud problem,” which presumably is a lot of the states that he lost in 2020, many of them run by Democratic governors. He’s [also] been saying that [elections] should be nationalized. That’s really not constitutional or even practically viable, but it shows you where his mind’s at.

How did Democrats respond to Trump’s claims?

Democrats pretty swiftly, by and large, came out and said that this is crazy and unconstitutional. I was at a conference, the National Association of Secretaries of State, in [Washington,] DC. They do it every year, but the vibes were completely different this year because all of the Democratic secretaries are terrified and strategizing for this potential assault by Trump on the integrity of the midterms. 

We spoke to a lot of officials. Some of them didn’t want to tell us what possibilities they were planning on preparing for; they said, I don’t want to give [Trump] any ideas. But they’re very afraid about possible troop deployments, which we’ve seen in California and Chicago. They’re also scared about ICE and [other] immigration enforcement agencies possibly being sent at the last minute when it might be too late to stop, but early enough to cause chaos and possibly intimidate or disenfranchise [voters]. 

The Republicans we talked to by and large are not afraid. They don’t think Trump’s going to do anything terrible. They applaud his efforts to clean up the voter rolls. They are supporting his efforts to require voter ID. They’re supporting his legislative priorities in terms of requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration.

There might be an air of intimidation that could play into 2026. Is there concern about that and do we know if that’s an explicit strategy from the White House?

When you talk to nonpartisan election experts, folks that are former election administrators, that is what they bring up. [Trump] doesn’t actually have to do all this stuff to make an impact. He can just threaten it because it is scary. People might ask themselves, Is it really worth it to go vote for some senator that I think is a bum or some member of Congress that I might not even remember? Like, What have they done for me lately? Am I going to risk getting detained for them, to vote for them? I could imagine that is going through people’s minds. 

Are there other ways that you think Trump could influence or interfere with the midterms?

The Justice Department has sued more than a dozen states for access to their voter rolls — private data belonging to American citizens that the states are in charge of. The feds think that they have the power to access it, but so far they’ve been losing. There have been at least two cases — one in California, one in Oregon — where federal judges have rejected those attempts by the DOJ to get that data and the Democratic officials in those states say, we are not giving you this data. 

The Republican officials that we’ve talked to in the states have said, We’re doing a very good job already keeping a very clean voter roll. We’ve purged a lot of people. They’re trying to make the case politely to the administration that we love the idea of what you’re doing, but please let us do it. 

DOJ is not just in court. They have really ratcheted things up. A few weeks ago, Attorney General Pam Bondi made waves when she sent a letter to officials in Minnesota, basically offering a quid pro quo that the administration would pull back ICE from Minnesota in exchange for the voter rolls from Minnesota, which most election officials that we spoke to and nonpartisan experts say is bananas, like a hostage [threat]. The Minnesota secretary of state called it a “ransom note.”

How legitimate do you think the concern that Donald Trump will steal the midterms is?

Everyone should take this seriously, not because people should be conspiracy theorists, but because we’ve lived through this before. 

I wouldn’t have necessarily said this in 2017, in the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, but we have the benefit of 10 years’ [experience]. Donald Trump claimed the Iowa caucuses were rigged when he lost to Ted Cruz in 2016. He claimed that the popular vote was rigged against him when he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, also in 2016. He tried to overturn the 2020 election, which led to a violent insurrection. 

That being said, the nonpartisan experts in election administration say that despite all this noise, despite all the fears, despite what you’ve been told that our system is garbage, it’s actually quite resilient. There are many safeguards. There are hardworking, Democratic and Republican officials and nonpartisan staff that run these elections. There are judges and courts that take this seriously as a firewall when people do try to get involved with some funny business, and that you should rest assured that your vote will be counted and will be counted fairly, despite all the drama.