GOP senator 'takes whack' at top Trump aide boosting calls to nationalize elections

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis on Wednesday took a "whack" at controversial White House aide Stephen Miller while discussing Donald Trump's recent election comments, according to one CNN reporter, suggesting that he ought to brush up on "third grade math."

Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who is not seeking reelection at the end of his current term, has emerged as a vocal GOP critic of Trump, trashing his desire to annex Greenland and butting heads with the likes of Miller and Kristi Noem over the White House's immigration enforcement operations. On Wednesday, CNN's chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju pressed the senator for his reaction to Trump's contentious recent assertion that voting ought to be nationalized.

According to Raju, Tillis countered that such a move would not have the votes to pass, and suggested that Miller figure that out by applying basic math.

"He's probably focused too much on his Duke education, and should go back to third grade math," Tillis said. "My granddaughter can figure out we don't have the votes to get that done."

Trump made the comments about elections during an appearance on the relaunched podcast from his recently departed Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, while also reiterating his long-debunked claims that he won states in presidential races that he actually lost.

"The Republicans should say, we want to take over, we should take over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places," Trump said. "The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting."

He continued: “We have states that are so crooked and they’re counting votes. We have states that I won, that show I didn’t win. Now you’re going to see something in Georgia where they were able to get with a court order, the ballots, you’re going to see some interesting things come out.”

The suggestion drew swift pushback from both Democrats and Republicans, even among the latter who otherwise support his proposals for election reforms.

“I’m not in favor of federalizing elections, no. I think that’s a constitutional issue,” GOP Senate Majority Leader John Thune said on Tuesday. “I’m a big believer in decentralized and distributed power. And I think it’s harder to hack 50 election systems than it is to hack one. In my view, at least, that’s always a system that has worked pretty well,” he said of the benefits of empowering states to run federal elections."

"This is frankly about what comes next," leading Senate Democrat Mark Warner said. "It is deeply alarming that just yesterday, the president called for Republicans — his words — to take over and nationalize voting in multiple states. That statement alone makes clear that this threat to our election security, the basic premise of our democracy, is forward-looking to 2026 and 2028 and, candidly, to the institutions that safeguard our democracy. If it doesn’t scare the heck out of you, it should.”