The American citizenry have to withstand a daily barrage of stupid, crazy and frightening declarations that emanate out of the White House — but none are more scary than a recent statement by Trump on a conservative podcast Sunday, Feb. 1, when he said Republicans should “nationalize” American elections.
“We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places.The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
Trump was on the podcast of former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino.
In a MS NOW report of the broadcast from earlier today, writer Steve Benen wrote:
Partway through the interview, Bongino briefly referred to crime rates, to which Trump responded with a meandering rant across a variety of unrelated subjects, including his bizarre beliefs about election administration.
In the course of an unsettling tirade about his “landslide” victory in 2024 (which clearly wasn’t a landslide) and his belief that undocumented immigrants were brought into the U.S. specifically to vote against Republicans (undocumented immigrants cannot and do not vote), Trump elaborated on his vision for the nation’s electoral system.
“You know, it’s amazing that the Republicans aren’t tougher on it,” the president told Bongino. “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 then proceeded to refer to states he believes he secretly won, despite the election results.
The president has long struggled with the basics of constitutional law, his oath of office notwithstanding, but Republicans can’t legally “nationalize the voting.” The U.S. Constitution, which Trump swore to uphold, delegates power to the states to conduct elections.
His bonkers conspiracy theories have been thoroughly discredited, but even if they were rooted in fact, GOP officials couldn’t simply launch an electoral power-grab at will.
It might be tempting to discard Trump’s latest nonsense as inconsequential. Sure, he might want to “nationalize the voting,” but since that’s not a legal option, his unconstitutional wishes are irrelevant.
But it’s not quite that simple.
Trump has long made clear that he rejects the idea that Americans settle their differences at the ballot box, and in recent weeks he’s offered fresh evidence of his antipathy toward democracy. On the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks, for example, Trump briefly floated the idea of canceling future U.S. elections. A few weeks ago, he told Reuters that he’s so impressed with himself and his record that “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.”
While Trump doesn’t have a credible plan to take over the nation’s system of elections, his increasingly frequent and radical declarations have been unsubtle. They’ve also begun to result in concrete action: It was just last week when FBI agents raided an elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, seizing ballots and voting records as part of the president’s conspiracy theory, which included Trump personally thanking the agents for their efforts.
This coincided with Trump’s Justice Department pursuing an aggressive campaign to acquire voter rolls from states where Democrats won in 2024.
Those concerned about democracy, voting rights and the integrity of election results don’t have the luxury of simply shrugging with indifference at the president’s latest nonsense. It’s part of a broader pattern of behavior that extends well beyond ridiculous whining.
This is not a drill. The country that is flailing is yours. Some call this moment a “five alarm fire.”
The GOP are putting us onto the path that leads to a Venezuelan or Russian election model, where National elections are decided by the party in power. The great advantage of America being a Union of States, is that States have independent and widely divergent election systems, and it’s hard for anyone to game the results enough to change the National outcome. The USPS changing their rules whereby your mailing might be postmarked that day, or maybe not, is directed at ballots received post election day, enabling their being marked void in States where the postmark determines validity. Vote early, vote by Registrar of Voters collection box, or vote in person. My usual inclination of voting to prevent a party supermajority at any level of City, County, State, or Federal government doesn’t matter in this time of systemic threat.
Terra Lawson-Remer must be idolizing it. And she thinks it’s transparent. LOL I don’t agree with Dumpy or this feeble county attempt.
https://voiceofsandiego.org/2026/02/04/supervisor-floating-big-changes-to-county-leadership/
We live in an era of Authoritarians. Remember when the County Board of Supervisors declared absolute authority over all Cities in the County in early 2021 over COVID. All evictions were made null and void effective May 2021. Keep in mind that COVID emerged in Mar 2020, and by May 2021 it was a different world, with vaccines readily available. COVID was a handy excuse to grab absolute power.
Hoping Norman you’re not bending into anti-Vax territory. At any rate, no “absolute power” was grabbed or even materialized.
Do you think we could focus on Trump’s authoritarianism for even one second, without making absurd parallels?