President Donald Trump on Monday declared that the Republican Party should “nationalize the voting” in the US and take away individual states’ power to administer their elections.
While speaking with Dan Bongino, a former FBI deputy director and current podcaster, Trump rehashed the false allegations he’s made in the past about Democrats only winning elections through the help of undocumented immigrants.
“These people were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally!” Trump falsely claimed. “Amazing that the Republicans aren’t tougher on it. The Republicans should say… ‘We should take over the voting in at least… 15 places.’ The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
Trump: "These people were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally. The Republicans should say, we should take over the voting in at least 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting. We have states that I won that show I didn’t win. You’re gonna see… pic.twitter.com/H5hT3OvtLE
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 2, 2026
Trump then continued to rehash his lies about winning the 2020 election that he lost to former President Joe Biden.
“We have states that are so crooked, and they’re counting votes, we have states that I won that show I didn’t win!” he said. “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. But, you know, the 2020 election, I won that election by so much. And everybody knows it!”
In fact, Trump lost the 2020 election to Biden at both the national level and in the state of Georgia, which has a Republican governor, a Republican secretary of state, and a Republican-run Legislature.
Last week, the FBI executed a search warrant at Georgia’s Fulton County election hub and hauled out boxes of ballots as part of an investigation related to the 2020 election.
Some Trump critics reacted to his latest outburst about “nationalizing” the vote by noting how incredibly unlikely the president would be to succeed in such an endeavor.
“Neither Trump nor the GOP in Congress have this power, and the only way they do this is if we decline to stand up for our rights,” wrote Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible, in a social media post. “He’s had a string of electoral defeats and rightfully fears the midterms. His outbursts are real threats, but they come from weakness. Tough shit, he’s going down. No Kings.”
MS NOW contributor Philip Bump also expressed skepticism about Trump’s scheme, which conflicts with Article I of the US Constitution.
“Trump doesn’t have the power to federalize elections, which obviously doesn’t mean it’s OK that he’s saying things like this,” he wrote. “The stuff about ginning up bullshit in Atlanta—we’ll see.”
Political strategist Murshed Zaheed likewise advised his social media followers to “take a deep breath” before panicking over Trump’s plans.
“Trump cannot change election/voting rules with [executive orders],” he wrote. “Of course they are going to try crazy stuff—but this is desperate attempt to gin up fear.”
Other critics, however, said that Trump’s remarks needed to be taken as a direct threat to democratic governance.
“He’s saying the quiet part out loud,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). “Trump and MAGA Republicans can’t win with their unpopular policies at the ballot box, so they want to steal the 2026 election.”
Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan expressed even greater alarm.
“The last time he started talking like this, his allies minimized the risks and we ended up with January 6,” he warned, referring to the deadly riots carried out by Trump supporters on the US Capitol that sent lawmakers running for their lives. “This time we must take him literally and seriously. These comments are a five-alarm fire for democracy. In a functioning republic, he would be impeached and removed from office today.”
Trump’s comments come as Republicans in Congress push a bill that would enable massive voter purges, impose photo ID requirements, and ban ranked-choice voting, universal mail-in ballots, and the acceptance of mailed ballots that arrive after Election Day.
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
Why are you passing for the option that leads to thousands dead when we haven’t exhausted all other options. Again, no one is stopping you from being our stalwart leader, put some skin in the game or fuck right off.
Yes yes, cartoons are for dumb people, haha. Neat ad hominem though.
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I’m well aware, open revolt is after the polls fail. Have you not read like anyone about revolutions?
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Well yeah, we all do. Ignoring our shutting down the vote makes things wholesale different and unquestionable. Going violent as you seem to be implying now makes seems wildly shortsighted. You don’t have skin in the game so you don’t care how many thousands of millions die because you couldn’t wait to try to vote out a tyrant before getting violent.
I’m aware of the pretti murder, everyone is you’re not telling me anything new you’re just trying to use it as an excuse to escalate in the same way they are.
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Again we’ve been protesting, you can’t hold politicians being politicians on the nation as a whole because more than half of us are disgruntled about our politicians, the system is just rigged to favor a certain class of jackasses.
You’re standing where it’s unlikely you or yours will be among the dead, of course you have a different perspective because you have significantly less risk. Stop shilling for mass death.
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We’re trying to do that part of that is protesting and voting. Ps this isn’t the status quo, protests signal abnormality mass protests every single weekend for like a year signal mass abnormality.
Oh yes because I don’t agree violence is the answer just yet clearly I’m the same as the administration that’s using mass violence.
If anything you’re closer to the orange dipshit than I given that you want it to get violent because it’s unlikely to effect you personally and you somehow see it as a means to an end to get your way.
The only thing violence instead of protest will get you at this point is a lot of people dead and talking heads spouting off about the violent left.