'You played yourself': Trump criticized for latest attempt to manipulate elections

President Donald Trump and his Republican supporters have “played” themselves in their latest attempt to rig the 2026 midterm elections, according to a key conservative critic.

Because Trump’s executive order is likely to fail in court, “Trump’s latest and most madcap executive order on mail-in voting isn’t just a policy pivot; it’s a full-frontal assault on the plumbing of American democracy, delivered with the Cromwellian subtlety of a sledgehammer to a stained-glass window,” wrote Rick Wilson, a former adviser to Trump’s fellow Republican, President George H. W. Bush. “It’s classic Trumpism: find a functioning, if unglamorous, part of the civic infrastructure, set it on fire because arson is your only tool when electoral reality is bearing down.”

He added, “But it’s also among the dumbest ideas to slither out of the wet-brained claque of Trump’s advisors and lackeys, and that’s a very, very high bar.” After all, as he noted, many Republicans vote using mail-in ballots. If the executive order is overturned but MAGA voters still hesitate about mail-in ballots because of Trumpian propaganda, then “the MAGA voter now says, “Well… can’t do that mail-in ballot. George Soros has a secret army of gnomes in the mailbox to change my vote and make me trans!’”

Wilson added, “In the words of the poet and philosopher DJ Kahled: ‘Congratulations. You played yourself.’”

Of course, as Wilson pointed out, the reason Trump supporters want to make it harder to vote is not because they believe voter fraud is rampant, as no evidence exists that this is the case. Rather they do this because they realize they are likely to suffer major losses in the 2026 midterm elections.

“This isn’t born of a sudden, scholarly interest in administrative efficiency; it’s born of a cold, acidic flopsweat over the 2026 midterms,” Wilson said. “The MAGA brain trust has seen the polling, and many of them are asking ChatGPT, ‘What is seppuku?’ and ‘How to enter witness protection.’

Wilson has taken aim at Trump before. In his weekly Lincoln Project podcast last month, Wilson said that Trump had utterly failed to distract the public from the scandal surrounding his association with the late child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Even though Congress passed a law saying the Justice Department can only redact the names of survivors, Wilson obtained a document which was redacted and mentions Trump.

"In it, Trump's attorney at the time, Alan Garten, I believe, is the name, revealed a few small things," Wilson said. "One of which is that Trump never threw Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago."

Also in March, Wilson warned Republicans that Trump has already started to experience his downfall.

“There’s a moment in every failed strongman’s story when the noise fades, the flunkies fall silent and slip from the throne room one final time before the shooting starts,” Wilson said. “There’s a moment where the court jesters stop laughing at the Dear Leader’s every joke, and when reality comes crashing through the gilded walls like a breaching charge. There’s a moment when the loyal bodyguard’s eyes flicker with some new signal, and the dictator wonders if the tools of oppression and brutality will be turned on him.”

He added that Trump’s political problems are serious “now.”

“Nothing will save you now, Donald,” said Wilson. “Not the war. Not the lies. Not today’s loyalists, tomorrow’s traitors. Not the terrified little men orbiting your shrinking political sun.”