Trump Inserts Himself Into Elections Past and Future

Donald Trump continued these last 10 days his quest to remake our country to his liking. He wants elections to be nationalized because “Our elections are crooked as hell” he falsely says. For that matter, why have midterm elections, boasting that he had accomplished so much that “when you think of it, we shouldn't even have an election.” And he’s still working on fixing the results of the 2020 election, having his FBI haul off hundreds of boxes of ballots from a warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia, home to Atlanta. He wrapped up the week with a racist slur that tops them all, but we’ll take that up below.

There were a number of oddities about the FBI’s “court-authorized law enforcement activity”, additional to the unexplained reason for the raid itself. The search warrant, which requires listings of what is sought, is under seal and no one is talking. Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, the officer that is in charge of elections, was not advised of the raid. The special agent in charge in that Georgia district, who would have overseen the raid, “resigned” but may have been fired just days before the warrant was executed.

Raffensperger was on the other end of the notorious Trump phone call after election results were reported in 2020, beseeching that he "find" 11,780 votes, the number needed for Trump to win Georgia, and threatening Raffensperger should he not comply. A Republican himself, the state secretary is currently being pressed by Republicans in the state legislature to turn over to the Justice Department the state’s complete voter registration rolls.

But the biggest oddity was the presence of Director of National Intelligence
Dirdctor of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard


(DNI) Tulsi Gabbard, who, as the highest official on scene in Atlanta, is presumed to have directed the operation. She refers to herself as only “visiting the FBI Field Office in Atlanta” where she did not “issue any directives”. But “My presence was requested by the president”, she says. As her presence drew fiery objections from members of Congress and the media, Trump absented himself from blame and said Attorney General Pam Bondi, a cabinet member like Gabbard with no authority over her, had told the DNI to go to Atlanta.

Gabbard arranged a phone call to the White House in which the President extraordinarily spoke directly to FBI agents with attaboys and thanks for their good work. Trump said to Dan Bongino, until recently the deputy director of the FBI who left to resume podcasting, “you’re going to see some interesting things come out” in Georgia.

What has the DNI to do with elections, was the question. It is an oddity for intelligence personnel to travel within the U.S. at all, their concerns being the rest of the world. Gabbard's press secretary issued a statement skilled in its opacity telling us that Gabbard was on scene in her…

”vital role in identifying vulnerabilities in our critical infrastructure, protecting it against exploitation, and coordinating with all Intelligence Community elements under her leadership to integrate and analyze intelligence related to election security”

Ms Gabbard followed up with a letter to the ranking Democrats on both House and Senate intelligence committees emphasizing her statutory authority to oversee efforts protecting American elections from foreign interference and to analyze potential threats to voting systems. But Atlanta? How is Atlanta the epicenter of foreign intrusion?

Gabbard was steamed at the reaction to her presence there:

”Contrary to the blatantly false and slanderous accusations being made against me by Members of Congress and their friends in the propaganda media, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has and will continue to take action under my statutory authorities to secure our nation and ensure the integrity of our elections.”

After the voting records seizure, the Mad King set to posting late at night, bringing back the weird claims that Italian satellites were used to hack into U.S. voting machines to flip votes from Trump to Joe Biden in 2020, that…

“China reportedly coordinated the whole operation…the CIA oversaw it, the FBI covered it up, all to install Biden as a puppet.”

It was Fulton County’s district attorney who developed the vast “Rico” racketeering case against 18 in Trump’s retinue, including his attorney Rudy Giuliani and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, for interfering with the election in her state. But the case was compromised by the “impropriety” of D.A. Fani Willis for hiring her lover to run the prosecution. She was removed and the prosecutor who took over declined to proceed. The case was dropped.

The margin of Trump’s loss in Georgia was so tight – witness his “find” plea – that the vote was recounted three times, and by different methods – by voting machines, by hand, and by signature validation. But don’t be surprised if in the near future Mr. Trump tells us that in a fourth recount he won. By a landslide, of course

Had he won Georgia, that would have still left him 42 votes shy with 290 for Biden and 248 for himself, so the point of the Atlanta incursion eludes.

What is worrisome is what the Atlanta strike portends for this fall’s elections and beyond in 2028. Trump is telling us that he can do as he pleases, pillage any election center that reports vote counts he doesn’t like, and come up with a different count to make his preferred candidate the winner. Just last month he told The New York Times that he regretted not sending in the National Guard after the 2020 election to seize voting machines to look for fraud.

That was not a five-years-later idea. It comes from a heated debate on the night of December 18, 2020, in which lawyer Sidney Powell and Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, proposed martial to do exactly that. The meeting went well into the evening with Rudy Giuliani contacting the Department of Homeland Security to see if it had the authority to confiscate the machines. Telling the president he would be impeached again and that "we would all end up in prison", as he later related, Giuliani successfully quashed Trump's interest in the ploy.

It was just after that meeting in the early morning hours of December 19th that Trump, exasperated he could not use the military, sent the email, "Big project in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!" It would be an attack on the Capitol instead.

There is now no one to inhibit Trump. After all, didn’t he get away with attempting to overthrow the entire presidential election of 2020 with the Supreme Court rewarding him with immunity for it?

In Monday’s interview with Bongino, Mr. Trump said that Republicans should “nationalize the voting process”. Referring to immigrants he said (the incoherence is his),

“These people were brought to our country to vote. And they vote illegally. And the, you know, amazing that the Republicans aren’t tougher on it. The Republicans should say ‘we want to take over. We should take over the voting, the voting in at least, many, 15 places’”.

It is the states that are given control of elections in our Constitution’s Article I, Section 4:

“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof…”

Trump cannot nationalize elections; if nothing else, the logistics would stop him.

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to explain away Trump’s comments saying,

”What the president was referring to is the SAVE Act… The President believes in the United States Constitution, however he believes there has obviously been a lot of fraud and irregularities that have taken place in American elections…”

We need always point out that there is nothing to support Trump’s beliefs which are the products of a demented mind. The Act would require photo-ID and proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections and bans noncitizens from voting, which is already the law but the Act plays along with Republican fictive insistence that there is widespread voting by undocumented immigrants.

Later that day Trump undercut Leavitt at a bill-signing with lawmakers from the Hill hovering over him. Ducking a reporter’s question about nationalization and which 15 states, Trump said,

“I want to see elections be honest and if a state can’t run an election I think the people behind me should do something about it, because, you know, if you think about it, a state is an agent for the federal government in elections. I don’t know why the federal government doesn’t do ’em anyway. The federal government should get involved. These are agents of the federal government to count the votes. If they can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over.”

Demoting the states to mere agents of the federal government isn't new. In August he tweeted,

"Remember, the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.”

It hasn't caused the uproar one might expect perhaps because by now his ignorance of the foundations of the United States has become such a given that counter-reaction is pointless.

On Wednesday, Trump told NBC News he did not say "nationalize", which he did, and that he will only accept the results of the 2026 midterm elections if they are "honest," and that if he believes they aren't, then "something else has to happen."

Apart from its white supremacists, the nation was stunned yesterday to learn that President Trump had reposted a short video in his account at Truth Social in which the heads of Barack and Michelle Obama had been grafted onto the bodies of primates in a jungle setting as seen here.
It's the oldest of the slurs against Blacks, here applied to the former President of the United States and First Lady. Met with rage, the post was taken down and – as usual – a staffer was blamed, which is how Trump always tries to wriggle free of his hate-filled malaprops. (How likely would a staffer on his/her own post this?)

From in his twenties working for his father blocking rentals of Blacks in Trump senior's apartment buildings, to his full-page New York Times ads asking for the death penalty of the Central Park Five which he continued to urge even after the five were exonerated, to his campaign to disqualify Obama from becoming president with the false claim he was born in Kenya, this latest brings up to date a lifelong record.