Trump acts like America is filled with idiot people
Thursday night on prime time, Trump called for bolstering election protections he has systematically and deliberately dismantled. Ask yourself why. He obviously thinks MAGA is stupid ("I love my uneducated voters"), but he's acting like the whole country is full of idiots with no attention span and no memories.
Trump destroyed election integrity agencies on purpose
Trump spent the first part of his second term dismantling the entire election protection apparatus, the thing he now insists we need for accurate election results. He’s the boy who cried wolf, only he is the wolf.
Under Trump, the F.B.I.’s task force on foreign influence was shut down. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence got rid of the national task force that tracked foreign meddling in our elections. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has been gutted. After the Supreme Court told him he could fire anyone he wanted, he gave pink slips to the entire bipartisan federal agency created to help run fair elections.
And he has appointed a billionaire heir to a housing fortune with no relevant intelligence experience as the new director of "national intelligence."
Trump’s attacks on election-security measures
The Cybersecurity Agency had been a lead federal partner for states on election security efforts since the 2016 election, sharing cybersecurity data, best practices and intelligence concerning foreign interference in U.S. elections. But because director Christopher Krebs validated the integrity (and thereby, implicitly, the results) of the 2020 election, Trump fired Krebs and significantly scaled back the agency’s workforce, funding, and core operations.
The F.B.I.’s task force on foreign influence was also disbanded, along with scaled back enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, despite years of warnings by U.S. intelligence agencies that foreign malign influence operations spreading dangerous disinformation were a growing and dangerous threat. Trump curtailed criminal charges for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which required people to register when lobbying on behalf of a foreign nation, directly and significantly aiding foreign interference in our elections.
Finally, Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence, Jay Clayton, lacks the ‘extensive national security expertise’ required by law under the federal statute that created the role. Clayton has scant national security experience; most of his career he’s represented big money/major investment banks in international deals. If there are conflicts between corporate financial interests and national security priorities, which side do you think Clayton will be on? Worse, Clayton has publicly defended Trump’s worst and least supported election initiatives, appearing on television airwaves to promote conspiracy theories about states’ primary election results, proving Trump chose him for loyalty, not expertise.
Trump keeps lying
The NY times reported on Friday that none of the documents Trump released during his speech to support his election claims say what Trump says they do. The documents were released during Trump’s primetime address to convince Americans that they should doubt the legitimacy of U.S. elections, but the print doesn’t match the hype.
He argued in his speech that China helped Biden win in 2020, even though US intelligence concluded it was Russia who interfered to help Trump. The documents he posted online show the opposite: that both China and Russia targeted former President Joe Biden's campaign during the 2020 election.
Trump called for fixing vulnerabilities in our electronic voting system so that “we can never watch a stolen election again.” Perhaps he meant the 2024 results were stolen, because all of his legal challenges to the results of 2020 were laughed out of court due to lack of supporting evidence. Those courts told Trump the same thing he needs to hear after his absurd “stolen election” claims last night: Your personal opinions, Sir, are not evidence.
Trump plans to take over federal elections
To anyone following closely, the purpose of Trump’s speech was to sell a pretext. Trump is laying groundwork to declare a national emergency at or around the time of the midterm elections. He’s desperate to sow doubt around the security of our elections because he knows he will need a strong justification for sending in federal troops.
By now, analysts are warning that Trump will deploy ICE agents to polling places. Whenever asked, Trump has signaled that that is his plan. The National Guard is likely to follow suit. Asked directly, Trump himself refused to rule it out, saying he would “do anything necessary.”
Trump said in his speech, “If you look at voting today, it’s in such bad shape in so many states,” “And we are committing to fix it… before the midterm elections.”
There is no evidence that our elections are flawed, and Trump knows it. So he used his primetime speech to tell us that he is gearing up to put armed ICE goons at polling places to intimidate women and minorities into staying away. Let’s hope it backfires and keeps MAGA at home while everyone else turns out. If 90 million voters stay home again this year, we’ll get the Nazi government we deserve.
Sabrina Haake is a political analyst and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.
