The following is a lightly edited transcript of the August 12 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
In an interview with a MAGA media personality, Donald Trump lets slip that he’s considering declaring a national emergency to take over the midterms. This is partly bluster, but we should take it seriously. It comes as Republicans privately fear Trump’s rage is boiling over their failure to pass voter suppression legislation. He’s clearly looking for new ways to steal the election this fall.
So what can Trump actually do if he does try to go full dictator and seize control of the midterms? How far can he get? What impact might it have even if he fails? What can we do to prepare? We’re talking about all of it with election law expert Rick Hasen, who’s one of the best out there at explaining this stuff. Rick, good to have you on.
Sargent: So just to set the table here, the Senate went into recess without passing Trump’s SAVE Act, which could disenfranchise millions if it did pass. Politico reports that Republicans are now bracing for Trump’s, quote-unquote, “wrath.”
They expect Trump to explode again with more demands for the SAVE Act, and they fear that’ll turn off MAGA base voters they need to turn out in the midterms. Rick, what do you make of all that?
Hasen: Well, yeah, it’s been really one of the president’s priorities for months. He’s obsessed with election fraud. Whether he believes it or not, he talks about it constantly. And what the SAVE America Act, as it’s now called in its most recent iteration, would do, among other things, is require everybody to potentially re-register to vote, providing original copies of their birth certificates, maybe their marriage licenses, their naturalization certificates. It would be a hugely disenfranchising law if it passed.
But it’s stuck. There are not even 50 Republicans who support it. So there are Republicans like Lisa Murkowski and Mitch McConnell, both of whom have reasons to oppose it. So forget about blowing up the filibuster, which is what Trump wants the Senate to do. There’s just not even enough support on the Republican side to get this thing passed with a majority vote.
Sargent: Right, this thing isn’t happening, and that’s the context for this. Trump was talking to Wayne Allyn Root, a MAGA personality. Root suggests that Trump declare a national emergency to take over our elections. Then Root says the Supreme Court has precluded Congress from overriding such declarations. And listen closely to the end, where Trump says, “stranger things have happened. I’ll leave it at that.” Check this out.
Wayne Allyn Root (voiceover): You have the right to declare a national security emergency for elections. And the Supreme Court ruled in 1983, under Reagan, that INS versus Chadha—that if you declare a national security emergency as the president of the United States, they can’t challenge it. It can only be overturned by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress. So if you do this in the next month, we will get photo ID, proof of citizenship, and a limit to mail-in ballots, and you don’t—
Donald Trump (voiceover): Stranger things have happened, I’ll leave it at that.
Root (voiceover): All right, we’ll leave it at that.
Sargent: So you heard that, right? Trump says clearly, “stranger things have happened, I’ll leave it at that,” Rick. So let’s just break this up into pieces. Before we get into the details about what this would entail, Trump is letting it dangle out there that he’s really considering this, right?
Hasen: Yeah, I mean, he’s just constantly saying things. You may remember months ago he talked about nationalizing the elections and taking over elections in 15 states. So he’s constantly making claims that maybe he’s going to do something related to the midterms.
And his new attorney general, Todd Blanche, won’t preclude the idea of sending ICE agents to the polls. Now, I don’t think that’s going to happen, but they’re dangling all kinds of stuff out.
