President Donald Trump doubled down on his calls for federal control of U.S. elections during a wide-ranging NBC interview on Wednesday, but he said he meant the government should look at “some areas” where it should intervene.
In a sit-down in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump was pressed to explain comments he made earlier this week on a podcast pushing Republicans to “take over” election administration in parts of the country — a proposal that has drawn bipartisan alarm and legal scrutiny.
Trump denied using the word “nationalize” in describing his earlier remarks and instead suggested that there are areas in the country that require federal intervention. He cited without evidence some major cities as examples of places where elections are rigged.
“When, and I didn’t say national — I said there are some areas in our country that are extremely corrupt. They have very corrupt elections,” Trump told NBC anchor Tom Llamas. “Take a look at Detroit. Take a look at Philadelphia. Take a look at Atlanta. There are some areas that are unbelievably corrupt. I could give you plenty of more too. I say that we cannot have corrupt elections.”
Joe Biden won all of those cities in the 2020 election.
But Trump did in fact suggest Monday that the GOP should nationalize elections as he was speaking on a podcast with Dan Bongino, who was Trump’s deputy director of the FBI until last month.
“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 said.
The president also warned on Wednesday that if he believes elections aren’t conducted fairly, then alternatives need to be implemented.
“We can’t allow cheating in elections. Now, if we need to put in federal controls as opposed to state controls, remember this, they’re really an agent,” he said. “They’re really accumulating the votes for who wins an election. If they can’t do it honestly and it can’t be done properly and timely, then something else has to happen.”
Steve Bannon, the former White House strategist, publicly urged the Trump administration to deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to polling sites for the November midterms.
“We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again,” Bannon said Tuesday on his “War Room” podcast. “And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.”
Bannon went even further on Wednesday, suggesting Trump send the U.S. Army to voting locations.
“President Trump has to nationalize the election. You’ve got to put — not just, I think, ICE — you’ve got to call up the 82nd and 101st Airborne [Divisions] on the Insurrection Act,” Bannon said.
Trump’s call to nationalize elections has drawn sharp backlash from across the political spectrum, with some people warning that federal takeover of voting processes would be unconstitutional. Asked whether he would accept a midterm defeat if Republicans lose control of Congress, Trump said he would “if the elections are honest.”
The president has long insisted, baselessly, that the 2020 election was rigged against him, even after multiple reviews confirmed that he lost to Biden. In recent days, Trump has continued to resurface his claims, specifically in Georgia, that the election was stolen. Last week, the FBI made an unannounced search of a Fulton County elections office and seized hundreds of boxes of documents related to the 2020 election.
The administration’s efforts to chase false allegations of voting fraud has gone beyond Georgia. Reuters reported that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s office oversaw an unprecedented investigation into electronic voting machines in Puerto Rico in May. Puerto Rico voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden in 2020.
The National Intelligence office coordinated with the FBI to examine the technology and potential vulnerabilities in the U.S. territory’s electronic voting systems. The move was part of a broader effort tied to claims about foreign interference, including from Venezuela. But the office did not find evidence that Venezuela had hacked the machines or that such interference occurred.
Notably, Gabbard was also present at the Fulton County search last week, which drew scrutiny from Democrats. In a letter to lawmakers, Gabbard said her office has “broad statutory authority” to coordinate intelligence related to election security.
Ebony Davis is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked at CNN as a campaign reporter covering elections and politics.