Some More News - So, Donald Trump Can't Cancel Elections....... Right?

Episode Date: April 15, 2026

Hi. On today's episode, we look at what Donald Trump can legally do to try to gunk up the midterm elections, and what other non-legal stuff he'll try to do anyway.Hosted by Cody JohnstonExecutive Producer - Katy StollDirected by Will GordhWritten by Tom ReimannEdited by John ConwayProduced by Jonathan HarrisPost-Production Supervisor - John ConwayResearcher - Marco Siler-GonzalesGraphics by Clint DeNiscoHead Writer - David Christopher BellFor a limited time, Wildgrain is offering our audience $30 off your first box – PLUS freeCroissants for life – when you go to https://Wildgrain.com/MORENEWS to start your subscription today.Pluto TV. Stream Now. Pay Never.For a limited time, get 40% off your first box PLUS get a free item in every box for life at https://Hungryroot.com/smn with code smn.Chapters:(0:00) - Introduction(2:08) - So, Are There Going to Be Elections or Uhhhh…?(13:47) - This Is How Elections Work(24:28) - All The Ways Trump Is Trying To Screw With Elections(43:34) - Trump Is Going To Try To Nationalize ElectionsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey there, showed busters, showed breakers, show to phones, and source shows. Sheet shows. Here's some news. The midterms are coming up in a couple months. Maybe. Fingers crossed. Elections feel sort of, um, up in the air right now. That's the mood, at least. Despite the president and his Republican freak squad being overwhelmingly unpopular right now, They don't seem very nervous about getting reelected, or rather they don't seem to care about public opinion, but have a lot of, um, let's call them, concerns about the election itself, specifically whether or not they can break them. Most recently, Trump signed an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security to make a list of eligible voters, and then barring the U.S. Postal Service from sending ballots to anyone not on his special list.

something that violates many laws and the, you know, the Constitution, which is laws is dad. If only because the president simply isn't allowed to oversee elections. He can't just do anything he wants via executive order. That's not really how it works. And it's weird, we even have to litigate it. But I think Trump knows that and doesn't care. Dude kind of feels like the shark from jaws. circling around the boat and ramming the hull in different spots to see if it'll break.

For the most part, he keeps bouncing off each time. So far, we're seeing some cracks start to leak, but for now, he's not getting through. Meanwhile, everyone on board is drunk, a bunch of us are being eaten, and the people in charge are telling us the shark doesn't exist. But at least in jaws, the boat never sinks. Right? I forget. Anyway, question.

So are there gonna be elections or a short answer? Yes, most likely. Spoilers for this episode, but there isn't much Trump could do to outright cancel or seize elections. Still, Trump is dying, it seems. His brain certainly is. And if he's not dying, he's contemplating the fact that he might, in theory, lose the midterms, which might, in theory, be bad for him should he continue living.

So, it kind of feels like we're all sitting in the break room wondering whether he's going to burn the building down before he gets fired, like Jerry McGuire if he got kicked into acid by the Batman. It's understandable to assume the guy who briefly wanted to invade Greenland might do something a bit impulsive, is my point, and he's given us reason to worry. There was the whole insurrection thing. Can't forget that. But more recently, during an appearance on former podcaster turned former deputy director of the FBI turned current podcaster, Dan Bongino's podcast, Trump flat out said that Republicans should take over state elections because the illegal immigrants you see, they're voting in droves. And by droves, I mean,

let's see, about 0.0.0.2.8% of voters in the state of Michigan alone, also known as 15 people. And even after the White House tried to walk his comments back, Trump doubled down like a molten pile of Greece and hubris and told reporters in the Oval Office that some states can't be trusted to run elections and should relinquish the process to Congress. He floated some feeble reasoning, attempting to reduce the role of states in an election to that of government employees counting votes and suggesting that their electoral duties can be reassigned.

He's also said, quote, if a state can't run an election, I think the people behind me should do something about it. Referring to a throng of Republican congresspersons gathered around him like David Lopan's mystical henchman. It sure sounds like the president is saying the Republican-controlled federal government should handle elections for all the corrupt states by which he means the Democrat ones. Or whichever states don't vote the way he wants.

Now, Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune hosed that notion down like diarrhea at a bikini car wash. But House Speaker Mike Johnson has publicly indulged in election conspiracy theories perfectly suited for the King's Rose Garden Ballroom Jubilee. Really, smearing that diarrhea everywhere. So at best, we have a president saying, maybe no elections? And a Congress who can't agree whether or not that's bad. So they're just kind of not doing anything

and hoping it'll work out somehow. Maybe they'll die before it's an issue. They're all like 90 anyway. Most likely, Trump is speaking this way, in order to butter the country up for another stop the steel style gambit. Because of course, he is still obsessed with losing to Biden, Joe Biden. This January, which was 40 or 50 years ago by now, the FBI seized ballots and voting records from Fulton County, Georgia,

as part of a vague investigation of election fraud. In reality, Trump is hammering Georgia largely because the Secretary of State of state refused to find extra votes for him back in 2020. That's a real conversation. That took place. We have it on tape. So look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.

And flipping the state is a great testament to our country because, you know. I love how he framed it like, find me a way to win the state that I didn't win because we won the state, which I flipped from 2016, even though I did win it in 2016, unlike now, which is a great testament to the country. Like he'd forgotten the beginning of the sentence he was saying and was already celebrating his own lie. Anyway, this nonspecific investigation is clearly just an excuse to steal records and search them for anything. that can retroactively be used to generate criminal charges. And hey, that's illegal, unconstitutional even,

if you want to get nasty about it. According to a pending lawsuit against the Trump administration, which is just one of hundreds. Great job, awesome president we've got. The FBI actually seized sensitive election records, including hundreds of boxes of ballots themselves, in addition to ballot images and voter rolls, voter rolls. This was after a judge explicitly told them they couldn't do that and could only make

copies of the records until they went to a different judge willing to play ball. Because I guess they really wanted the physical ballots for some reason. Also, according to the Fulton County Commissioner, the search warrant was for two misdemeanors, the statute of limitations on which had long since expired. So it was a flimsy search warrant used as a screen to conduct an illegal seizure of voting records and physical ballots. The County Commission has also pointed out

that they no longer have a chain of custody inventory for the ballots, meaning there's no longer a complete record of where all the ballots are or who had control of them at what point. If you've watched a lot of cop shows, you've probably heard that term before. It's the clerical procedure they use to keep people from destroying, altering, or otherwise tampering with evidence.

I wonder, I wonder if that's relevant. Anyway, sorry, Fulton County. I hope you're able to track down your ballots again. Have you checked the Mar-a-Lago bathrooms? And Fulton County super wants these back, by the way. They're doing a whole trial about it right now, during which, one of the witnesses, an election security expert who worked at the the U.S. Election Assistance Commission testified that the entire justification for this raid had, quote, no basis in reality. After all, the FBI hasn't really even indicated what exactly it is investigating in the first place. I mean, since when do they justify things anymore anyway,

we went to war over vibes. Director Cash Patel told Fox News that they just need to go through the voluminous amounts of information collected and continue our investigation. In other words, we'll let you know what we're looking for when we find it. That's the can-do attitude that wins you future indictments. So yeah, it's just so obvious what happened here. Trump told the FBI to go get these ballots because of his dumb election fraud lie, and then the FBI had to make up a reason after the fact. Trump even spoke directly with FBI agents during this raid. government official described the call as about a minute long, and the kind of pep talk you

might give to a little league team right before handing out orange slices if only Trump had been allowed to play sports. Ah, curse those bone spurs. Notably, Trump gave the agents no specific instruction or direction for the investigation. Just go in there and find some crime. And then they did it because that's what sniffling henchmen do. After all, cool cash got to be big boy FBI by being a personal sounding board for Trump's election grievances like that guy's sidekicking for the mummy. He played golf with Trump and listened to him vent about terminating election laws and the Constitution,

presumably while letting the commander-in-chief, more like jerk-mandering thief, shave a few strokes off his game. Just a casual fash hangdown at the green, knocking putts over Ivana's grave. Here's the president back in January rambling about the rigged 2020 election and vowing that the people responsible for his big humiliating failure will be prosecuted. It's a war that should have never started and it wouldn't have started if the 2020 U.S. presidential election weren't rigged. It was a rigged election. Everybody now knows that. They found out people will soon be prosecuted for what they did. It's probably breaking news, but it should be.

It's a rigged election. Can't have rigged elections. Everyone knows it. All out in the open. Rigged election. It is amazing. He'll just, he'll just say that. As if it happened.

Like someone showed him an AI video of Joe Biden and George Soros eating ballots. But I guess that's the difference between a lying hobbyist and a professional. You gotta drink your own hogwash until you love it. The point is, it's not clear exactly what charges the FBI are pursuing. because it took a bunch of stuff it wasn't supposed to. And I don't think it matters to them what they find

or even if they find anything, so long as it looks like some kind of crime happened. They got out all their tough guy vests and gear and stormed in there like they were taking down the Unabomber so that the stupidest people in the world could see it on TV and go, oh wow, something must be up with those elections, Trump, an actual criminal we let be the president, felt scorned by all the times he was investigated

and raided by law enforcement, because of the real crimes he did, and clearly just wants to wield that power on his perceived enemies. In this case, people who did their jobs instead of helping him steal an election. But that's just an added bonus to the main goal of this, which is to so doubt in our electoral process. Because whether or not he can cancel or steal the election, Donald Trump has absolutely fantasized about it. He's mused about it for years. He openly admires dictators and dictatorial regimes, chuckling about getting a third term. Oh, also, he already tried to overthrow the United States by attempting to block the certification of a presidential election. Remember that? I feel like I should mention that.

that again. That's a red flag, right? He's the only person in modern American history to refuse the peaceful transfer of power seems bad. Dare I say, I don't think we should ever have a president who shows open disdain for democracy and jokes about canceling elections. Even if, and this is important, he really can't. Because he can't. Good news. Good news. Donald Trump can't cancel our elections, midterm, presidential, rose ceremony results, or rather, he can say he's canceling elections. But they'll just keep happening around him. And I will explain why, which unfortunately means I have to explain how elections work too. I'm so sorry.

The electoral process, it turns out, is pretty densely complicated. Each state runs their own elections, as stipulated by the Constitution. States directly elect their own representatives for Congress, but indirectly elect the president via a system of electors, who generally vote according to whichever candidate won the popular vote for their state, although in some states, they're not technically required to. But in 32 states, they are required by law to reflect the wishes of the voters. There were a lot of shenanigans with that back in the 2020 election, with Trump frantically trying to sway electors to vote against their population's wishes,

or to outright replace electors with crackpot loyalists. If you're wondering, no, you can't do that. Electors are themselves voted in and aren't just like, anyone? What Trump was doing was the equivalent of... This. This verdict is written on a cocktail napkin, and it still says guilty. And guilty is spelled wrong. It was a crime, in fact, one that many of the fake electors got in trouble for, at least until

being pardoned, of course. Had these fake votes made it to Congress, there was simply no way they would decide to overturn the results based on them, even if the Republicans wanted to. Unless, you know, the violent mob? stormed the Capitol and successfully executed the vice president and put Trump in power by force. And since January 6th, those rules put on Congress have become even tighter. As for the individual states, elections are held by district. Each district is responsible for holding, staffing, and tallying their votes,

then recording the results and reporting them to the state. When the state has collected the results from every district, it records and reports them as. until we have a final tally and then everyone gets together in the nation's capital, takes the blood oath, certifies the results, swears in the next president, and goes back to their Illuminati bunkers. In terms of both presidential and congressional elections, the physical ballots never leave their respective districts. That's very important. It's part of that whole chain of custody inventory. Some states even have different methods of calculating the results. Most states do a simple majority, but Alaska and Maine have ranked choice voting.

Maine also assigns its electoral votes to districts, same as Nebraska, so candidates have to win a majority of those districts in order to snag their respective electoral votes. Several states like Texas, Florida, and Michigan, span multiple time zones, which adds further logistical kinks to the process. I think Wisconsin has a cheese-based system where you feed mice and the plumpest one of the most one, wins? I hope it's that. This is all to say that the American electoral process is almost completely decentralized. It's a tangled web of jurisdictions within jurisdictions in every state of the Union and it's nearly impossible to pull apart. And while you may think that's inefficient, that is by design. For exactly the crisis we are currently experiencing, Trump has and will perpetually test America's guardrails against fascism for as long as we let him.

And luckily, with elections, there's simply no way for him to litigate or legislate or influence enough to change or sway the core process, especially not before the midterms. And especially not to the midterms. Again, he could say, no elections, thank you for your attention to this matter. But since it's all run in the states, he can't force the them to stop. No, not by declaring martial law or invoking the Insurrection Act either. Or rather, not legally.

Not without a massive power grab that would most certainly result in a civil war, which technically he could do, I guess. The same way he could do anything. The same way a meteor could hit me in the dick. It's possible, but not likely, because it would require not just Trump, but everyone around Trump to willingly and very deliberately piss in the face of every American

and throw this country into chaos. Chaos that would be antithetical to their goals, even their evil goals. Like, I know they're all very stupid people, but even they want to like, survive. Also, and most importantly, they don't think they need to do this. Because this isn't a binary situation. Elections aren't either free and fair or non-existent. There are, oh, so many ways that Trump and his pals can skew the next election in their favor.

So it's time to talk about the very real ways that can happen. After the ad break, I love democracy. But I love these products so much more. I love these products so much more. I called them products. wanted to make your own bread at home, but you can't find a spot in your kitchen to add a state-of-the-art proving drawer like they've got on the Great British Baking Show. As an American, I don't even know what that is, but I know I need it if I want to have good bread. At least, that is, until I found out about wild grain. The first, bake-from-frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, artisanal

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Star Trek film franchise, and Gladiator. That's what I would say if you ask me what awesome movies were available for free on Pluto TV. Okay, now that the content narcs aren't watching anymore, let's talk about what they really have. The real deep cut movies, the man doesn't want you to see. Ish like Bumblebee, dinner for schmucks, Universal Soldier, Tender Mercies,

and even more outrageous titles like Jimmy Proton, all charged up. Johnny Namiby. Johnny Mnemonic 2 avenging dear Aunt Sally Napoleon Dynamite 2 escape from Elba Midnight Cowboy 2 hey I'm Waymo in here Tron 4 age of old Tron the man with one and a half butts the artistic selfie of Dorian gray scale and plops a real melange the cinema as it were and let's not forget

television the old tube de boob with great shows like Survivor SpongeBob Square Pants, a Randy Newman Christmas, a hello Newman Christmas, a Newman's own Christmas, a very Brady flag day, angels and demons and Ted and Alice, the fairly odd parents, your hair is everywhere, screaming infidelities and also clogging the sink. Could you do something about that, please? And ghosts.

So that's that. Nobody left to Narc on your film and TV habit. Plus, blow it out of it. TV is always free with the streaming now and the paying never and the flame and the just so on g-ing- well well well look to you came crawling back as we just explained there's no legal or peaceful way for Trump to simply cancel elections not without completely upending the country much like the shark did to the boat at the end of jaws and while maybe Trump a dying man with a melting brain, might be more than happy to do that.

I don't think J.D. Vance wants to get blown up with an oxygen tank. Metaphorically, of course. Can't always get what we want, though. So it's far more likely that the GOP will embrace less direct methods of screwing with the midterms and presidential election. The same way, they always have. So let's run through all the methods Trump, the demon fish, is trying like hell to screw with elections.

to gum up the works, to queer the pitch, to Dick the Tracy, to... Manufactured distrust. I wasn't done. To jabber the jaws. Okay, I'm done now. So this is step one in an escalating series of steps. It cost them very little to foment distrust in the election process, and subsequently, the results of any election they don't like.

That's MAGA classic. They spent Biden's entire administration. attacking the future results of the 2024 election, before realizing they didn't have to when the Democratic Party tripped over the corpses of thousands of dead children for the L. 70% of Republicans said they didn't think the 2020 elections were free and fair, but those numbers were almost completely

inverted after 2024. Whoops! I guess voting works fine or whatever, when Republicans win, but now that Trump and and as cronies are doing a wind sprint towards total authoritarianism, they're returning to that same old mixed CD of lying about voter fraud by illegals, like the most racist volume of now that's what I call music. You know the one. And just to start, not only is there very little evidence of non-citizens voting in our elections,

but very little voter fraud overall. Back in 2021, the Associated Press did a deep dive into this and sent a gaggle of reporters to talk to 340 election officials across the country to look for evidence of fraud. They came up with a total of 475 potential instances, ranging from people who didn't realize they couldn't vote to people deliberately voting on behalf of a dead relative. All in all, none of these cases could have swayed the 2020 election, in which over 150 million people voted. But that's not gonna stop them from constantly acting like our elections are under attack, putting Nick Shirley on the case to turn their supporters against any election where the results are undesirable.

Oh, did a Democrat flip a state in the midterms? Must be that fraud we kept talking about. Weird how only the blue states do fraud. But what's kind of amazing is that at the same time, Trump is talking about the dangers of election interferes, and fraud, he's actually working to remove every protection against election interference he can. For example, he's dismantling election safeguards he himself implemented during his first administration. In 2018, Trump signed a law creating the U.S. cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency,

which operated under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security, providing resources and expertise to states on how best. to safeguard elections from outside interference. And it was a bipartisan success. One of the rare victories of the Trump administration. He doesn't get a lot of wins for the history books, and Sisa was a genuine W. Not the Bush kind.

Never the Bush kind. I guess, sort of the Bush kind with Iran. Flash forward to 2026, and Trump has gutted Sisa. A move, his administration has been told by multiple sources, will leave state and local election offices more vulnerable to attack. He also launched investigations and indictments against former CESA Director Christopher Krebs for disloyalty, after Krebs rejected Trump's baseless claims of interference in the 2020 election.

Specifically, Krebs referred to them as technically incoherent, which is a slightly more polite way of saying, the dumbest shit I've ever heard. Trump's campaign lawyer at the time, Joe D. Genova, told Newsmax that Krebs should be executed for his remarks. So to, um, to recap, the president has dismantled the organization he created to safeguard elections and is trying to prosecute and maybe kill the person in charge, all in the run-up to the midterms. So while he's not personally attacking elections, he's essentially putting a delicious pie on the window sill and theatrically covering his eyes.

Except he wouldn't even cover his eyes because he's so dumb and bad at both crime and not being obvious about the many crimes he personally commits. He would just stand there, leering at the pie like it's an eighth grade pageant winner. So that's Tier 1, simply making the public feel generally uneasy with the election process by claiming widespread fraud while simultaneously making easier for widespread fraud. And once enough people are convinced of all the fraud or do the fraud because he made it easy for them, he can then move on to step two. Disrupt the process. So when I say disrupt the process, I mean any attempt, legal or not to make it harder to vote or

harder for your vote to count. So for example, that old classic of gerrymandering, which we're seeing in states like North Carolina and Texas. Of course, that's to be expected from both parties. And frankly, it's weird, we haven't done something about it. But I guess to do something about it, we'd need the people who love gerrymandering to do the thing about the thing they love. So again, whoops, fucked that up.

Fucked up saying whoops. More like, whoops. Anyway, we'll fix it next country. Old news is my point. Let's talk about some of the more innovative ways the GOP will be making it harder to vote. There's, of course, purging of voter rolls, which is the act of accessing lists of registered voters

and finding ways to disqualify them based on technicalities. In theory, that sounds apolitical, unless you selectively do this in areas more likely to vote for your opponents, which is what they do. Voter role purging, like gerrymandering, is another grotesque violation that we just sort of accept as conservative political strategy that needs to be outsmarted. We've already seen some pretty outrageous tomfoolery in dozens of states like Tennessee and Georgia

in which eligible voters have had their registrations canceled due to spurious reasoning like address changes or inactivity. Remember, voting is a constitutional right, just like free speech and the crunch rap supreme. It doesn't expire. You don't lose those things by not. using them. At least not yet, because Trump's Department of Justice has now been demanding voter rolls from several states and is currently suing more than 20 of them for the information, including Minnesota, which I'm sure had nothing to do with Trump's decision to deploy ICE to

Minneapolis and unleash dystopic violence everywhere. Okay, specifically, the DOJ wants the names, social security numbers, driver's license numbers, addresses, and registered parties of every voter with the end goal of creating a national voter role. You know, for safety. In a confidential memorandum between the Department of Justice and the states willing to share voter rolls, the DOJ requires that those states remove any voters deemed ineligible by a federal review. And other reports have indicated that the Trump administration, is already sharing those voter rolls

with the Department of Homeland Security, presumably to run citizenship checks, or whatever we're calling it this week. In theory, if you actually trusted the federal government, this might not be an immediate disaster, but all it would take is one corrupt administration to abuse this, right? Can't think of one off the top of my head,

but you get the idea. Hypothetically, if a president was like, a criminal and openly considered the opposition party enemies and actively refused to represent the interests of all Americans. All right. Well, you would see how this imaginary scenario would be bad. More on that later. Anyway, so far, a handful of Republican states have complied

because of course they have, while dozens of others continue to refuse, possibly because the stated purpose of a national voter role is as flimsy as Michelangelo's nun chucks. I never met one kid who didn't snap Mikey's chucks the moment they came out of the package. Bad toy. Speaking of other flimsy shit,

Trump has gone bananas for passing the Save Act, which would require everyone to present proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. He really wants this to happen for Jesus. And I'm requesting that the Republican senators do that immediately. You don't have to take a fast vote, Don't worry about Easter going home. In fact, make this one for Jesus, okay?

Make this one for Jesus, that's what I tell him. Yes, Jesus loved papers, please. You've probably heard a lot of conflicting statements about the severity of the SAVE Act. In short, it would require anyone registering to vote to present proof of U.S. citizenship, typically a passport or birth certificate, which a large portion of the population does not have.

If you're married and change your last name, for example, you may have to obtain additional documents to prove your citizenship. A lot of married people, especially older couples, don't have that stuff readily available. Additionally, even small changes to your address might require re-registration due to this act. Trump is also pushing to make mail-in voting nearly impossible unless you have an illness or disability or are the president, apparently, because Trump just voted by mail and also lied about why he voted by mail. Considering that voter fraud is near non-existent and voting is your right, the Save Act would create unnecessary hurdles for a lot of people, requiring them to pay fees to get the needed documents for no good reason. Essentially, it's an indirect poll tax, which is an illegal practice of requiring payment to vote long outlawed by the 24th Amendment.

Before then, poll taxes were created in the Jim Crow South in order to prevent anyone of limited income from voting, namely all the newly emancipated black Americans. As I said, and we'll keep saying, voting is a constitutional right, but there is a clear push by the GOP to make it less of a right for others. They can't outright stop women and minorities and poor people from voting, so they have the SAVE Act instead. They love using this innocent sounding reasoning that, well, if you're not illegal, you have nothing to worry about. But it's strange that the party who hates big government is trying to put up as many bureaucratic hurdles as they can when it comes to the simple act of electing our representatives. Especially since, and this is worth noting, the SAVE Act will hurt just as many, if not more, conservative voters. Especially if red states just start doing their own little save act, which is what Sweaty Ron is trying to do right now in Florida. At best, it's a misguided attempt at unneeded election security that will decrease voter turnout.

At worst, it's a direct effort to disenfranchise the poorer classes. Either way, it's bad. But it's still not the most sinister way that Trump could disrupt elections. Because remember, his prime prime thing. His primary goal has been to so doubt in the security and legitimacy of elections themselves, something he would need to do very soon in order to survive the midterms. If only, if only he had some kind of goon squad to help him out with that. Will you rule out the deployment of ICE or CBP to polling places this November?

There are no plans to have ICE officers at our polling locations. I'm glad to hear that, but would you rule it out? Would you say it will not happen? Do you plan on illegal aliens voting in our elections, Senator? I do not. In fact, the Heritage Foundation. Unless you plan on illegal aliens voting. Hmm.

No ICE at polls unless you plan to let illegals vote. Something that Trump believes is happening. Seems scary. Whatever. I'm sure ICE won't be at polling stations. It's not like they're barging into other areas like the airport, nor has the idea already been floated by Trump's pals like Steve Bannon. Multiple times in fact.

If they don't have illegal aliens voting, if they don't have these phony migrants that are here on these phony programs that are at the polls, and you're damn right. We're gonna have ICE surround the polls come November. Oh wait, it is like those things. See how they keep framing it like, well, if you're gonna have a legal's vote,

we have no choice, despite zero actual evidence that's happening. Because it doesn't matter, right? Never mind that the presence of armed federal agents or the military at a polling hub is explicitly illegal. The plan here is to manufacture a fake crisis and then claim you have no other choice but to respond to it. Just throwing up their hands like, well, I guess if no one eats that cake in the fridge,

I better do it before it goes bad. Except the cake is fascism and the fridge is America. Wait, the cake is America. The fridge is... The planet? The mouth is the fascism. Nailed it. Meanwhile, the dumbest people who ever lived

are gonna claim that no one should be threatened unless they have something to hide. Oh, you don't want ICE at polling stations? Well, you must want illegals to vote then. Except that's obviously not the problem. Ice has been routinely detaining anyone with a sun tan, brutalizing and even kill. killing people who so much is flinch.

This, in turn, pisses everyone off. Because most people don't really like the presence of masked goons pulling people out of voting lines, right? Most people like voting and believe in voting. At least, I think, hope that's still true. So while the obvious concern here is voter intimidation, I think there's an even shittier plan at work. The same reason they are sending ice to airports

during the shutdown. They want the process to fail, to justify sweeping changes. They want ICE to show up, specifically in blue areas, and piss people off. They want the subsequent protests and police brutality to surround the polling sites. That way, they can throw up their hands and declare the process to be broken. They can claim the midterms were fraudulent, or even worse, that the states themselves can't handle the voting process anymore. Going back to that quote from Trump, I want to see elections be honest. And if a state can't run an election,

I think the people behind me should do something about it. Because if you think about it, a state is an agent for the federal government in elections. I don't know why the federal government doesn't do them anyway. Maybe it won't happen before the midterms, but I think Donald Trump is hoping that, through some dark magic,

he could manage to nationalize our elections before his time is up. So, after the break, we're gonna explore that possibility. Do you like ads? Don't answer that. Look at the ads first, and then see how you feel. But hopefully it's yes. Howdy y'all. As a Montana ranch hand who spends most of her day wrangling horses, I can't so much as muster a can a bean a bean's come noon time.

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down the dusty old trail. Hey there, Shodehouse fans, original Ann reboot. We were talking about the different tactics Trump has been employing and will continue to employ in order to monkey with elections. Cancelling the election outright will be almost impossible, but so far the president has attempted to create distrust in the results before a single vote has been cast.

So he can disrupt the process as much as possible by purging voter rolls, suing states, and blowing up the results. department tasked with safeguarding elections. He's making sure the shark cage is unlocked before poor little mat hoop or even climbs inside. And before the break, we talked about the possibility of using ICE to disrupt the midterms to such an extent that Trump declares the entire process to be in need of intervention, which brings us to step three. Nationalizing elections. Trump's final move, his limit break, his ultra-combo, if you will,

would be to nationalize elections. It's a devastating scheme he has repeatedly floated. I already kind of explained why this is objectively a bad idea. But to reiterate, let's pretend you are a fan of Donald Trump and voted for him three times, despite him screwing up every goddamn thing in this country from the pandemic to the economy to this latest war. Do we have a clip to represent this hypothetical person? And you voted for him how many times? Three times.

That was my bad thing. apparently I'm an idiot. Thank you. Now, even if you think that Trump could be trusted, for some reason with overseeing the elections, including the presidential elections, well, you see the problem, right? Please tell me, you see the problem.

There's a reason we don't let children grade their own tests, or set their own bedtimes, or let presidents be in charge of their own elections. This is like basic square peg, don't go in round hole reasoning. If you trust Trump, the next president could be someone you don't trust. It could be Hunter Biden. Can you imagine? Smoking crack? Putting loyalists in charge of our elections. Smoking more crack.

This is a very stupid idea that Trump is trying to make seem reasonable. And as he does, we're going to see more and more polls and opinion pieces about it, gradually giving it more and more credence as an option. He and other online dipshits are concerned, going to start talking about the crooked California elections, the blue state fraud, and how it's time for a big tough president to be in charge of elections. Definitely no conflict of interest there. It's the only way to keep elections safe from all the, uh, uh, illegal aliens and the, uh, the woke mob. This will go double if there's any ounce of confusion or chaos during the midterms, which they could cause or any evidence of fraud, which they removed guardrails to allow. Again, it's the same principle. behind everything they do, like the Postal Service. You remove regulations and funding and resources, watch it fail, and then declare that it needs to be taken over.

Oh, maybe they should privatize elections. Everyone just tell Grock who they want as president. Congratulations, President Kat turned to! The good news, by the way, is that he can't do this, or rather, Article 1 of the Constitution says that the individual states have authority over over the election of senators and representatives specifically. Although it says nothing about presidential elections,

the Supreme Court has always assumed this rule applied to that as well. Article 2 does specify that states manage how presidential electors are chosen, but none of that really sounds airtight. At no point does the Constitution explicitly ban the president from involving themselves in elections, which is a little concerning, and that kind of brings us back to the general anxiety around this question. Can Trump cancel or take over the elections?

On paper, he can't. But Trump has this weird ability to say something enough times that it comes true. For whatever reason, this decrepit racist has the entire GOP in his mummy thrall. It's like he's playing GTA on God mode. Not a single person seems willing to hold him accountable for or stop any of his crimes.

He and the many podcasters he's hired seem completely unaware of the Constitution and will float everything from war crimes to just stealing another country. And it's impossible to know which of their threats will be followed up on and which crimes will be eventually reversed and punished. It seems like they've realized

that they can just do things and by the time the consequences catch up, it'll be too late. The tariffs, for example, have been ruled illegal long after Trump implemented them. But the damage is apparently impossible to reverse. All the doge cuts, the ICE detentions, all these blatantly illegal and unconstitutional actions that we're still trying to untangle after the fact. Meanwhile, people have died and will not undy.

Not without a tome and some candles at least. The entire government seems completely unprepared for a president, who just ignores the law. And no one is brave enough to just arrest him, arrest the guy, too partisan, you see. And hey, once he's not president, we can eventually get around to sorting it all out. You know, unless he screws with elections too.

That kind of seems like the plan, right? He's doing so much illegal shit, which he'll, in theory, have to answer for when the Democrats are in charge. So why not do a little more illegal shit to ensure that won't happen. By the time people realize it's illegal or unconstitutional, it won't matter anyway. And that's the wild card.

Yes, on paper, Trump can't just post, I hereby cancel elections on truth social or whatever. He can't order ICE to patrol polling stations and pull people out of line. He can't simply nullify the results of the midterms. But he also could try to do that, I guess. It's easy to think that. He's tried before. As I said, he's the only president to attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power.

And then he didn't go to jail for that, and we elected him again. Kind of our fault at that point. Not to victim blame, but it seems like we fucked something up. I mean, not we, but them. If we have to sit here and seriously ask if the president is going to try to undermine our elections, Because he's done it before.

Then we failed. Oops. Or to put it in another way. That was my bad. Apparently I'm an idiot. Thank you, miss. Indeed. It is deeply demoralizing to watch a president get away with so much crime.

To screw with our system as much as he has. To start illegal wars. To knock down entire wings of the White House and have nobody stop him. However, that feeling of hopelessness is exactly how Donald Trump came to power and stayed in power. Besides the racism, there is a type of voter who simply believes that America is beyond repair and has felt that way for a while. And they look at Trump and either think, why not?

Or, what's the point? That type of apathy and depression only helps the GOP. It's part of the reason why Trump's 2020. victory saw much lower voter turnout in blue areas than in red areas. I mean, the Democrats helped too, don't get me wrong, they really helped. But Trump wants you to feel like there's no hope. After all, when everything keeps going wrong, why would we expect anything good to happen? Of course he'll steal the elections, right?

So what's the point in even voting? The thing is, Trump's very stupid. Again, shark from jaws. He's just ramming the guard, He's surrounded by sycophants and loyalists, clearly none of whom are constitutional or legal scholars. If he tries to mess with elections, it'll be big and dumb and loud, and we can't do his work for him by assuming all is lost. We got a whoville this. I'm sorry to say it's gross, but we have to hold hands and be optimistic and assume the best and show up to vote. Because if we don't, then we may as well just leap into the shark's mess.

ourselves, vote. Not now, later in the midterms. Give it a shot, not just for the principle of it, but because it'll actually help the more people vote, the harder it is for them to deny the results. And if they do try to deny the results, if Trump declares himself king or whatever, well then we can try the oxygen tank. Which for legal purposes, the oxygen tank is a metaphor for, um, I don't know. Make another imagine video. Another imagine video. I'm sorry, it's too Marxist.

I can't even, I'm not even kind of like, the melodies Marxist, the chords are Marxist, the key, it's just, ah, ugh, ugh. Imagine everything in proper order. That is how it should be, but don't actually imagine. We don't want you getting too many wild ideas. That's what music should be, right? Just one note, everything's, everything's this right place.

Yeah. Anyway, hi Thanks for watching Make sure to like and subscribe if you would We got a patreon.com slash some more news We've got a podcast called even more news It's on this channel twice a week We do a live stream sometimes

Maybe the dates on screen Maybe it's not You can listen to this show as a podcast If you want instead of watching this There's maybe I'll sing more like that In the audio version I won't We got merch at a merch store

Warmbo's there other characters and other stuff is there. And I think that's everything. So we're just gonna, we're just gonna go. Imagine all the people.