Bulwark Takes - Rep. Jim Himes: Tuberville is “participating in a coup d’etat”

Episode Date: July 18, 2026

Sam Stein speaks with Rep. Jim Himes about Trump’s election speech, his attacks on voting systems, and the danger of declaring sitting senators illegitimate. They also examine how Trump’s own foreign-interference files document Russia’s efforts to help him, spread the Burisma story, and create chaos in American politics.

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and we're going to be talking about Donald Trump's speech last night, but before we start, Congressman, thanks for doing this. Really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me. You wrote an anticipation of the speech in the New York Times about your fears for what would happen, and then I saw you today on some of the TV shows talking about the speech. I know this is going to sound a little bit crazy, but did the speech, was it as bad as you were worried it would be? Well, yes, in the sense that the president just flat out lied on things that the government knows, that his government knows to be true, that we have corrupt elections, we don't, that the Chinese interfered in his elections, they didn't, and that a deep state cabal of,

you know, federal workers, intelligence CIA people kept information from it. I'll tell you, in some ways, that's the one that hurts the most because I spent a lot of time around intelligence officers. They are patriotic, they are superb. They are. apolitical. So the president told three huge lies, all of which you need to spend about two seconds on Google to find the evidence to show that he was lying about that. But I also expected him, if you read the essay I wrote in the New York Times, I expected him to get more into the source material and say, like, look, I'm holding up this report that clearly shows. And the problem, and the reason I realized in retrospect, the reason he didn't do that is because he can hold up

a report. And here, if you're trying to evaluate the credibility of the Chinese claims, let's say, Go do exactly what he told you to do. Go to whitehouse.gov, right? And look at the section called Chinese reporting. And what you'll see is document after document after document, which is nothing but black reductions. Now, I'm on the Intelligence Committee, so I know what's behind those reductions.

There's certainly nothing that says that the Chinese interfered in our election. You know, again, even the backup that he had, probably the big story from all that backup is just the comprehensiveness of the effort that Russia made to support him by attacking Biden and Hunter Biden, et cetera. So, wow. I mean, I was a little stunned by the brazenness of it. Yeah.

To your point, I read the documents. I mean, there was one element of it where someone was withholding and just one conclusion on China from the Presidential Daily Brief that they referenced, but they were doing that because they had more comprehensive studies that were coming later and they didn't want to get ahead of them. It was pretty remarkable how much the Russia stuff really was outlined in those documents to the degree that it was. But I do want to say, you know, there is always with Trump, like a little tiny little kernel that is exaggerated. And in this case, I do think when you talk to people who are in this

field, there are vulnerabilities in the machines. That's not to say that they've been exploited because they haven't, all the evidence shows that they haven't. But there are ways in which they could be updated. The software could be updated. They could be made more secure. What would you do about that going Yeah, look, I mean, you outline precisely one of the challenges in dealing with the president because he says exactly what you just said, which is that the machines have vulnerabilities, but then he goes a step further and says, and they were massively exploited so that our elections are corrupt. The first part is self-evidently true. Every single machine out there, this thing that you carry around in your pocket, has vulnerabilities. And I'm here to tell you that really

capable hackers can exploit those vulnerabilities. I'm always, here to tell you that there is precisely zero evidence that any of these vulnerabilities in voting machines were ever exploited. And even if, let's imagine that, you know, the Chinese or the Iranians or the Russians, who are sort of the featured player in all of this material, had actually gotten into the machines. You're still a long way from being able to compromise an election, right? I mean, most states and the United States have a paper trail of voting, not every single one, but most states have a paper trail. Most states it would be a simple matter if there was a compromise of the voter rolls.

For one thing, people would start showing up and not be on the voter rolls or vice versa, there would be votes cast in which there was no existing human. So my point is, number one, of course there's vulnerabilities. There's nothing out there that is not vulnerable to really good hackers. There's also no evidence that it's ever been abused. And even if you could get in, you know, you're still a long way from being able to compromise an election. Yeah, you outlined, well, let me start with this. Why do you think he gave the speech now?

Well, I think there's three things going on, maybe four. Number one, this is his thing, right? I mean, my God, since he was sworn in in 2016 and he had the biggest crowds ever, you know, it was sort of obvious that he didn't. You know, this has always been his thing. He's broken enough. You know, you and I, when we lose something, we're like, I had damn, I lost move on.

This is just like, you know, it's his white whale, right? Point one. Point two, he is remarkably unpopular. right now. I mean, I think he's as unpopular as any president has been, you know, in the midterms in our lifetime. And that leads me to point three, he knows that he is likely to get clobbered in the next election. The House is likely to become Democratic-controlled and maybe even the Senate. And this is what worried me most. Look, we're all used to Donald Trump telling baldface, obviously disprovable lies. But, you know, if you look on social media, there is 20% of the American

public that, you know, the man could, you know, tell him that he was the, you know, Donald Trump could say he was the lead ballerina and the Bolshoi ballet. And they'd be like, oh, yeah, clearly, clearly, you know, that we'll accept whatever he says. He was, right? And, you know, what he's doing is, and this is what really worries me is he's setting the foundation for an attack on the election. And I mean, you know what that looks like. Well, you painted a picture of that. You did paint a picture of that on TV where he talked about, I'll just paint the hypothetical and you can explain why you think it's realistic. Close elections for certain house races in Georgia or some other states,

California, New York, whatever. Trump comes out the night of the election, says, I've just been briefed by my intel committee or our community, the CIA, that the Iranians have been interfering with these elections. They've hacked the machines. We need to send in the feds to seize these ballot boxes to make sure that they are secure. And suddenly the chain of custody of the ballot boxes is disrupted and no one knows what, if anything, the federal government is doing with those votes. And there's no real way to check if they're up to no good. Is that a realistic scenario in your mind? It absolutely is, Sam, because anything is on the table. I was there on January 6, 2021 when something happened that was absolutely inconceivable and beyond the imagination

of any American, when thousands of, you know, criminals and violent people, egged on by the president, broke windows, knocked down doors, attacked police officers, and conducted a lethal raid on the Congress of the United States to try to stop the peaceful transfer of power. So you really think I'm going to say, oh, no, Donald Trump would never do that. Of course he would. And there's a myriad of other possibilities. I mean, that's really probably the ugliest one, because, you know, once ballot boxes in one of a hundred really sensitive locations around the country are in the back of a Department of Homeland Security van, it's game over, right? There's no way of knowing what the real result is. But let me give you another scenario,

which maybe is a little bit less complicated. Again, you're down to a couple dozen really sensitive locations. They're in Georgia, they're in Michigan, maybe North Carolina. You know, the president says, oh my gosh, in these locations, hundreds of illegal aliens are voting. And Patriots need to show up and stop them. And I'm sending in the National Guard or DHS to stop them. Now you have a polling place in Georgia where there are hundreds of armed federal agents or maybe even MAGA civilians armed. And now we saw this in Minneapolis. We see it wherever ICE operates. Now there's a reaction, right?

Whoever it is, you know, starts getting up in the faces of these people and says, you know, says the law, which is you can't be armed around a polling place. Now we have a scuffle. Now somebody gets shot or, you know, whatever, you know, DHS, ICE has been in the business of shooting people lately. But now we have a riot and potential chaos. And that, of course, is, you know, manna for the president. Because in the context of chaos, you know, you can play out any number of scenarios right up to including like there's riots in Michigan. I'm invoking the insurrection acts or the U.S. military restores order. All of these games are the premise is set by what the president said last night.

Because right now, even though anybody who is open to facts knows that the speech was completely made up, you know, feels like 30% of the population, whatever Donald Trump says is true, and they're going to act on it. So that just begs the question of, in preparation for these hypotheticals, what are Democrats doing? I mean, obviously, you're in a state where it doesn't seem like, you know, there's going to be particularly close elections, but you never know. But certainly there are states where you can see this playing out more likely. What conversations are happening that you know behind the scenes among Democratic officials, maybe, you know, train lawyers to get ahead of this. in a way that you weren't able to conceive of and get ahead of January 6? Yeah, no, it's a really good question.

And I mean, the good news is that, though you never thought it would happen here in the United States, we have generations of experience with elections that somebody's trying to compromise, right? Whether it's Central America or South America or Africa or, you know, whatever it is. And so there is a playbook, right? I mean, for one, and this is the partisan side of things, I like to say to the Democrats, let's make the win too big to rig, right? Let's not make in any given precinct. Let's not make it a question of vote.

Let's make it so overwhelming that you can't rig it. Okay, that's the partisan thing, which is less important. The more important thing is Americans need to know that they have the right to vote, regardless of how many armed men or whatever is happening in a polling place, you have the right to vote and you need to vote. Then, of course, we're going to do what, you know, God, it embarrasses me to say it. But, you know, what we've been thinking about doing as election monitors in places like Panama or Guatemala, you know, there are going to be lawyers on scene. There's going to be local law enforcement, hopefully very well-trained on scene, and there's going to be witnesses on scenes with cameras

recording what's really happening. Because at the end of the day, if any of these scenarios play out, they will be decided in the court, right? The Congress doesn't exist anymore. The Congress is now a wholly owned subsidiary under Republican majorities of Donald Trump. So an awful lot of this will be if there is a problem resolved in courts, and that's why it's going to be really important, both for everybody to know their legal rights, including, by the way, the National Guard and ICE and others what their restrictions are and for us to keep a really good record second by second of what's happening in these areas. I want to pick up on what you just said about Congress as a subsidiary of Trump because one of the scenarios that has been kind of out there is not a election day

scenario or even a preamble to the election scenario. It's a post-election scenario where you have the vote. It goes off. There's some drama, but it does go off. But after the fact, it's so close in certain districts, and Trump starts banging these drums again saying, I told you, there's shenanigans happening. We have evidence that there was illegal votes cast. We have evidence that the Venezuelans compromised, these election, these electronic voting machines. We can't seat these people until we get to the bottom of this. And at that point, the sitting speaker of the House does play a role because they can allow for the person to be seated. They can stop it. What confidence level do you have that congressional publicans after, you know, what you just said, would go along with Trump in that type of interference?

Yeah, my confidence level is 0%, right? I mean, you know, if you have eyes, you know that on January 6th, which is in some ways is a very analogous case to what you're talking about, Trump tried to get a mob to stop the administrative process of electing the president. You know, in the moment, in the moment, a couple of Republicans said, whoa, this is too much, right? But about 36 hours later, they're like, oh, these weren't tourists. Look what's happened with the January 6ers, right? Vicious criminals who killed police officers and were in jail until the president, of course, pardoned them. So, you know, maybe, maybe there'll be one or two courageous Republicans, but we're talking about,

you know, hundreds of them that will happily fall in line with whatever Donald Trump tells him to do so. But I want to take you to the day before or the weeks before because, yeah, what happens in the House is one thing. But what about the, remember, states need to certify their own elections, right? And in the last go-round, you'll remember this in Georgia. Georgia was going to do the right thing. Brad Raffensberger, now famous secretary of the state, Republican, doing the right thing. And the president called him up. You should run this quote. Find me 11,800 votes. And Brad Raffinsberger, thank God said, no, I'm not going to do that, sir. But I promise you, in Trump 2.0, the new Brad

Raffensberger is like, yes, sir, you know, I'm with you, sir, right? And so, So we're going to have certification, conceivably certification problems at the state level before those certified ballots ever get to the House of Representatives. Jeez. Okay. That's bleak. Speaking of, did you see Senator Tommy Tuberville's quote yesterday about four or five of his colleagues being illegitimate in the Senate? I didn't, but, you know, if you want to rot your brain really quickly, you'll read Tommy Tuberville quotes. Fair enough. He was not the only one pushing this idea. There was reports circulating that. Trump was going to declare John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock illegitimate senators. And I'm just wondering, is this like the next level, essentially, of what we're talking about, where people who are already seated are going to have their validity in Congress challenged? What worries me most about that is not

that John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are being kicked out of the Senate. That's not going to happen. I'm not even sure there's a legal mechanism for that to happen. What is devastating is that a United States senator and maybe more than one United States senator would effectively tee up a coup to ta. And let's just be very clear what we're talking about here. When one senator starts questioning the legitimacy of another senator or of a president or of whoever with zero evidence, and that's the key thing here, zero evidence, looking back at a process that nobody questioned and that probably six dozen courts upheld, what you have is somebody who is so demented that they are either wittingly or unwittingly,

participating in a coup d'etat. And let me tell you this as the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, you know whose work you're really doing? Yes, Donald Trump's, but read this stuff on Russia. Russia's objective here is yes, to elect Donald Trump, because Donald Trump loves him, some Vladimir Putin. But Russia's core objective here is to create chaos.

And the number of Republican senators, I hope you look back at this sometime, who pushed the Burisma, Hunter Biden, corruption in Ukraine, I've got the tape stuff, all of which turned out to be a Russian intelligence operation. You had senator after senator, member of the House, pushing stuff that was made up by the Russian intelligence services. And I'd like to imagine that Americans deserve a better leadership than that. Yeah, that was actually in the documents that they put out last night.

It was right there where they talked about Burisma being a Russian app. Last question for you. You wrote about this in the Times. I don't think people properly appreciate it, so I want to just focus on this. but you wrote about the sacking of the bipartisan election assistance commission and what that means. And it's a fairly obscure commission, right? I mean, not many people know exactly what it does, but putting in the context of other institutions, election-specific institutions that have also experienced a gutting by Trump,

how significant is it that the EAC has basically been disbanded? Great question. And you've got to put it in the context of what you just said there, which is, all the other mechanisms in the federal government that Donald Trump has disbanded. You know, the EAC is a relatively small and unknown commission that helps state administrators work on what the, you know, what good equipment is, best practices, et cetera. But, I mean, let me take you somewhere more interesting, in my opinion anyway, which is our unit inside the federal government, which looks for hacks of voting machines and other hacks too,

is a unit that most Americans haven't heard of. It's called SISA. Sisa was gutted. Its head count is down something like 50 percent and it has no leader. So Sissa was gutted. You just talked about the EAC. Got it inside the FBI, the Foreign Malign Influence Center, which is a bunch of FBI special agents looking for foreign intervention. Gutted. State Department, foreign interference units, gutted. So here's the president standing in front of the American people yesterday saying, Our elections are compromised, and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that they're not compromising the next one has completely torched the infrastructure that we have to make sure that our elections are secure. Right. I lied. I have one more question for you. You also wrote, in past elections, members of Congress have regularly received briefings on how nations such as Russia and China monitor our elections and what, if anything, they're doing to interfere in or influence them. Have you gotten any briefings prior to this election? I have gotten, and I'm going to be very careful how I say this.

I'm a member of the Gang of Eight, meaning the eight people in the Congress who get to see the most sensitive stuff. I've gotten a little bit. I don't think any other member of Congress other than Gang of Eight has gotten anything. And I've gotten a very, very little bit. So I don't want to sit here and tell you that I've gotten nothing, but I've gotten very, very little. And here's a key point. You know, though my job is oversight of the FBI, CIA, NSA, et cetera, I have infinite respect. for these folks. I mean, they are patriots. They work very hard. They try their best to be

apolitical. They could be making three times their salaries in the private sector. Can you imagine if you're at CIA or at FBI or at the State Department and your boss says, you, hey, we need you to be part of an election protection unit. We need you to write an analysis on whether the Chinese interfered in the last election. I mean, they just handed you your professional death warrant based on what the commander-in-chief said last night. So it's not just Donald Trump deliberately dismantling this stuff, but I hear every day people inside who are like, hey, look, man, I want to serve my country, but I'm not going near election protection because that's curtains for me. Well, this was an uplifting conversation. Congressman Jim Himes.

I'm sorry, man. I'm usually the optimist in the room, but this is, we need to be sensitive to this stuff. It's coming. It is. It's alarming, and it is coming. We're only a couple months away from the election. All right, Congressman Jim Himes of the great state of Connecticut. Thanks so much for joining me. Appreciate it. Have a great weekend, okay?