Today, Explained - The Art of the Steal

Episode Date: February 9, 2026

President Trump has a track record of election interference. And now he's threatening to nationalize or even cancel the midterm elections. This episode was produced by Kelli Wessinger and Avishay Artsy, edited by Jolie Myers, fact checked by Andrea López-Cruzado, engineered by Patrick Boyd and David Tatasciore, and hosted by Astead Herndon. A protester holding a "Stop the steal" placard during a pro-Trump demonstration. Photo by Paul Weaver/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Late last week, something rare happened. There's growing outrage to a video that President Trump posted last night. A video that included a racist clip of the Obama's depicted as monkeys. This is totally unacceptable. The president should take it down and apologize. Praying it was fake, because it's the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House. The president should remove it. Those are Republicans. That never happens.

But the video wasn't just racist. It was filled with conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, and not a peep from Republicans on that. Trump's 2020 obsession isn't a thing of the past. It's driving new investigations and shaping how the White House approaches the midterm elections later this year. That's coming up on Today Explain from Vox. Why have the ICE operations in Minneapolis struck a nerve

unlike anything else in the Trump era? It's really important to understand that this is a radical administration, It is not a conservative administration. I'm Preet Barrara. In this week, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Atlantic staff writer Anne Applebaum joins me to unpack what's happening in Minneapolis and why she argues this moment reflects a radical governing project, not traditional conservatism.

The episode is out now. Search and follow. Stay tuned with Preet wherever you get your podcasts. I got in the water in the very early morning before the sun had risen and the water was pitch black. I started swimming and I felt the water hollowing out around me and felt like something really big was swimming below. I'm Phoebe Judge and this is love. A show about the surprising things that love can make us do.

More than 100 episodes available now on This Is Love. I'm a stead herndon. Josh Darcy covers Trump for the Wall Street Journal. I asked them how Trump is keeping the dream of of 2020 alive in his current White House? Well, I think more than anything, he's put Tulsi Gabbard, his director of national intelligence, in charge of this. He's basically tasked her with trying to prove that he won the election in 2020. So she's reviewing ballots across the country. The federal government has seized

the voting ballots of thousands of people in a rate of the Fulton County Georgia election office. The president remains focused on the 2020 election more than five years ago, the election he lost to Joe Biden. Georgia says they had multiple recounts. They have nothing to hide. She's been in contact with FBI officials. The other day after that raid in Georgia, the New York Times reported that she put Trump on the phone directly with the FBI officials who did the raid.

And so you have sort of a whole-of-government approach. He also brought in a lawyer named Kurt Olson. In the 2020 election, Trump hired Olson to try and push his claims of fraud. across the country, and they were not successful. But earlier, well, last year now, we're in 2026, and last year, he hired Olson as a special government employee to come into the White House, work directly for White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, and try and prove election fraud. He also has told folks at DOJ, including Attorney General Pambandi and Deputy Attorney Todd

Blanche, that he wants them focused on this. So when he's returned to office, he's put the power of the government. government into researching his sort of false claims from 2020. And a lot of that, I think, is now just emerging publicly, but it's been happening behind the scenes for many months. Haven't many of these allegations of fraud already been investigated? I remember when Trump was out of office in the Biden years, this being a focus of so much litigation and just so much conservative activism in general.

President Trump and his campaign have filed a number of lawsuits against key battleground states President Trump suffering yet another stinging legal setback tonight, a federal appeals court tossing out his election challenge in Pennsylvania. What are the possibly hoping to find that hasn't already been found or scrubbed and nothing was found? Well, they've certainly counted the ballots over and over and over in Fulton County and, you know, Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger and others have certified the election, have studied at a time and time again. I'm a passionate conservative, and as I've said before, I'm a proud Trump supporter. Working as an engineer throughout my life, I live by the motto that numbers don't lie.

As Secretary of State, I believe that the numbers that we have presented today are correct. They say, you know, that Trump lost in 2020 and there was no widespread-scale fraud. He hired his own consultants in 2020, his own lawyers, his own consulting firms, his own researchers. They couldn't find evidence for it. So I guess the real answer to your question is that is I don't know what, well, you know, for in Georgia. I mean, it's sort of too early to say what the, we haven't seen the unsealed, you know, affidavit. We haven't seen any sort of court papers that show how they were able to get a court-approved search to go into an area like that, a voting area. But, you know, well, everything

else seemingly has been looked at many, many times since the 2020 election. In this Fulton County episode, you said that Tulsi Gabbard arranged a call between the FBI officials on the ground and President Trump as the investigation was unfolding. Now, obviously, that seems unusual at the minimum. Is this anything other than an effort of intimidation? Like, it kind of sounds like? Like, what was actually the purpose of said? Well, one of the things we've seen time and time again, I said in this administration, are cabinet officials, including, maybe most notably Tulsi Gabbard, who leads D&I, trying to get in the president's good graces, to carry out what the president wants, trying to keep him happy.

And what we saw here, I mean, first of all, it's really unusual for the Director of National Intelligence to be on the scene as the FBI searches, a court, you know, a court-ordered or a court-approved search. I don't know that we've ever seen D&I, the director, standing over in a hat and watching and sort of, you know, supervising or overseeing or whatever she was doing there. But that's, A, very unusual. B, it's very unusual to put the president directly on the phone with FBI line agents. I mean, it's certainly sending a remarkable message that you put the president of United States on the phone with FBI agents,

carrying out a search in Georgia, trying to prove election fraud, which is one of his top priorities right now. What are the other kind of 2020 investigations that the president had launched? Because as you said, it seems like kind of a full court effort. I think you've also seen him go after a number of. or have his Department of Justice go after a number of folks who've investigated him. You know, James Comey, they tried to bring charges against him, failed in Virginia. Comey was charged with giving false statements to Congress back in 2020 and obstruction of justice. He pleaded not guilty.

My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump. Tish James. They tried to bring charges against her. James, who was also pleaded not guilty, was charged with bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. This justice system, which has been used as a tool of revenge against those individuals who simply did their job and who stood up for the rule of law. You also, you know, seem wanting to go after Adam Schiff, who investigated him over Russia. I'll tell you what, I think Adam Schiff is one of the lowest of the low. I would love to see him brought to justice. You see him, you know, staying with Jack Smith, the former special counsel deserves to be charged.

But what they did was criminal. deranged Jack Smith, in my opinion, is a criminal. There are people left and right who he views sort of his proverbial enemies, who he's looking to see face the wrath of the Department of Justice. But why is he still obsessed with proving the Biden election to be false? Like, he won in 2024, has virtually erased much of the Biden legacy, has spent much of his first time erasing the Obama legacy before him. Like, he seems to actually, like, get the outcome he desires by returning to power himself.

Why is it necessary to him to invalidate the 2020 win? I mean, he said yesterday at the National Prayer Breakfast that he had to come back and win in 2024 for his ego. I didn't get it. It wasn't easy, you know? They rigged the second election. I had to win it. I had to win it. I needed it for my own ego.

I would have had a bad ego for the rest of them on. Now I really have a big ego, though. You know, 2020 losing, I think, was a big stain on his ego and his legacy. And he did not want to be viewed as a president who ever lost, right? I mean, for Trump, there's a relentlessness there. I mean, you see him now, you know, going back again, like the things that happened in 2016 and 2017 and trying to, you know, get history rewritten. I mean, look what he did on Jan 6.

I mean, in the aftermath of Jan 6, I think Republicans and Democrats alike viewed it as a dark day for the country and saw what really happened and how bad things were. And look how he's changed history over, maybe not history, but changed how many people see it over the years, you know, since then. He's sort of rewritten his own narrative of 2020 election is the same thing. You know, he's never given up on the idea that he could convince people that he won and he's still working at it. I mean, Trump is always bending a narrative, always selling the idea of him as a winner, him is all-powerful, him as a person who, you know, does not lose, frankly. And that's what he's doing here. I mean, what do we think about the other folks in government? When it comes to things like his election denial and consistent conspiracy on this front, is everyone else on board?

Are they willing to be on board just to maintain his favor? Or is there a limit? I mean, I guess I'm asking, is there a Mike Pence of the second? term that might say, hey, we may be going too far here. Do you see one? No, I certainly don't, but you know it better than I do. I mean, I think there are people in the White House who certainly think it's not the best use of his time, right?

And they certainly do not love, I think there are elements in folks who work on the White House who do not love spending part of their time on this. But is there anyone who's willing to go into the Oval Office, sit down with him and say, we're wasting our time on 2020. You lost. Let's move on. You won in 2024? I don't think that's happened.

No. There has been a lot of evidence, even the data and the amount of kind of election deniers not Dame Trump who have lost their races that this does not play well with voters. That although maybe the most ardent parts of the base agree with Donald Trump, there's not necessarily been a winning issue for them. Has there been any concern in the White House that Donald Trump's policy crusade on this front might hurt Republican politics? in the midterms year? Certainly. I mean, I think a lot of Republicans believe that the focus on 2020

is not helpful in the midterms. They, you know, believe a lot of the things he does are not helpful for the midterms. A lot of people have been happening with ICE in Minneapolis. Yeah, you're right. One of many.

He posted a video on Drew Social that depicted the Obama's as monkeys. Yeah. And he took it down a bit ago. But after widespread outrage, I mean, sure. I mean, I think if you talk to most senators, most members of Congress, most operatives across the party, no one would say, you know what really

helps us win in 2026, a relentless focus on the 2020 election. But, you know, Republicans have been trying to tell Trump what they want him to do for years or what's not helpful, quote unquote, and usually he does basically whatever he wants. And frankly, I don't see that changing here. Josh Darcy Wall Street Journal. Coming up, Trump's got plans. but they involve influencing the 2026 midterms. With Amex Platinum,

almost every purchase made with your card can be covered with points, including new tastes, new fits, and virtually everything in between. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Conditions apply. When McDonald's partnered with Frank's Redhot, they said they could put that shit on everything.

So that's exactly what McDonald's did. They put it on your McChrispy. They put it in your hot honeybeats, McNuggets dip. They even put it in the creamy garlic sauce on your McMuffin. The McDonald's Franks-Rad menu. They put that shit on everything. Breakfast available until 11 a.m. at participating Canadian restaurants for a limited time. Franks Red Hot is a registered trademark of the French's food company LLC. Over the last several years, AI companies of all shapes and sizes have been desperately trying to get their hands on every bit of available data to make their models better. This week on the Vergecast,

we have the story of how Anthropic destroyed hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of books, and fed them all to Claude. Plus, we have information on who in tech is in the Epstein files, what's going on with Netflix, whether it's woke, whether it's going to buy Warner Brothers, and whether Peloton is going to successfully sell you a treadmill ever again. All that on the Vergecast, wherever you get podcasts. I'm Marshall Cohen. I'm a senior reporter at CNN, and this year I'm focusing a lot on election integrity. and potential attempts by the president or anyone else to interfere in the midterms. Well, as we just learned, that makes you a busy man this year, considering Trump has not let up on his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Is there some sense that the claims of 2020 election fraud are influencing how he sees the

2026 midterm elections? To this point, what we've talked about has been backward looking. But from what it sounds like with your beat, this is still an active live ball. I mean, I think you should interpret everything he does this year through the lens of what he tried to do back in 2020. And I think he's very influenced by what he considers his shortcomings in 2020, where he didn't succeed in overturning those results. I think he doesn't want to get to a place this year where he has to overturn a result. He might try to put his thumb on the scales, use government. government powers, use federal authorities to try to influence the process.

What has Trump been saying about the midterm specific to the question of election integrity? Well, I mean, he made a lot of news just a few days ago when he went farther than he's ever gone before. The Republicans should say, we want to take over. We should take over the voting in at least many, 15 places. The Republicans order to nationalize the voting. He said 15 states. He didn't say which ones.

I think we can guess. He said that he was talking about the states that have the big fraud problem, which presumably is a lot of the states that he lost in 2020, that are many of them run by Democratic governors and stuff like that. So that's the big rhetoric instead, is that he's been saying that it should be nationalized. That's really not constitutional or even practically viable, but it shows you where his mind's at. If they can't count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take it.

But the Constitution says it should be states that administer elections, Mr. President. You know what? They can administer the election, but they have to do it honestly. Okay, how did Democrats respond to Donald Trump's claims about desire to nationalize the elections? Just give me a sense of the blowback. Well, Democrats pretty swiftly, by and large, came out and said that this is crazy and constitutional. Once again, the president's talking no differently than a dictator wants elections in America to be as legitimate as elections in countries like Venezuela. But it's so much bigger than this

instead. I was at a conference national association of secretaries of state in D.C. They do it every year, but the vibes were completely different this year because all the Democratic secretaries are terrified and strategizing for this potential. assault by Trump on the integrity of the midterms. We spoke to a lot of officials. Some of them, they didn't want to tell us what possibilities they were planning on preparing for because they said, I don't want to give them any ideas. But some of the things that they did divulge is they're very afraid about possible

troop deployments, which we've seen, obviously, in California and Chicago. And they're also very scared about ICE and immigration enforcement agencies. possibly being sent maybe at the last minute when it might be too late to stop, but early enough to cause chaos and possibly intimidate or disenfranchise. The Republicans we talk to by and large are not afraid. They're not worried. They don't think Trump's going to do anything terrible. They applaud his efforts to clean up the voter rolls. They are supporting his efforts to require voter ID. They're supporting his legislative prior. in terms of requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration.

It was really the Democrats scared of what Trump might do, and then Republicans essentially giving him some political cover. You know, obviously Trump has been willing to use the federal government to his disposal at unprecedented levels. We have mass squadrons of ice agents in blue cities across the country. You have people wearing their passports around their necks when they go to the grocery store after out of fear of being detained. Yeah. A lot of people are kind of scared right now.

There might be an air of intimidation that could play into 2026. Is there a concern about that? And do we know if that's an explicit strategy from the White House? When you talk to nonpartisan election experts, folks that are former election administrators, that is what they bring up, what you just mentioned, that he doesn't actually have to do all this stuff to make an impact. He can just threaten this. or bring it up because it is scary. And people might ask themselves, yeah, is it really worth it to go vote for senator,

some senator that I think is a bum or some member of Congress that I might not even, I might not even remember, like, what have they done for me lately? Am I going to go risk getting detained for them, to vote for them? Screw that. I could imagine people that is going through people's minds. Are there other ways that you think Trump could, influence or interfere with the midterms that we haven't covered yet. So a big piece of this, the Justice Department has sued more than a dozen states, many states,

for access to their voter roles. The U.S. Department of Justice is suing Virginia for not sending over its voter registration data. The Department of Justice is suing Illinois. The Department wants access to the state's official unedited voter registration. Yesterday, Wisconsin joined the growing list of states being sued by the United States. Private data belonging to American citizens that the states are in charge of. The feds think that they have the power to do it, which is why they've gone to court and filed these lawsuits. But so far, they've been losing.

There have been at least two cases, one in California, one in Oregon, where federal judges have rejected those attempts by the DOJ to get that data. And the states, the Democratic officials say, hell no, we are not giving you this data. It's protected by federal law and state law. I'm just like a hand. hand that over to them. Go jump in the Gulf of Maine. Again, sir, pound sand. The Republican officials that we've talked to in the states have said, you know, we're doing a very good job already, keeping a very clean voter role. We've purged a lot of people, like, you know, basically trying to say, no, no, no, don't, you don't need to do this. We're doing a good job. So they're trying to

make the case politely to the administration that, you know, we love the idea of what you're doing, but please let us do it. We're not so excited to give you the social security numbers of our constituents and stuff like that. DOJ is not just in court. They have really ratcheted things up. A few weeks ago, Attorney General Pam Bondi really made waves when she sent a letter to officials in Minnesota, basically offering a quid pro quo that the administration would pull back ice from Minnesota in exchange for the voter rolls from Minnesota, which, you know, most election

officials that we spoke to and nonpartisan experts said that is bananas, you know, like a hostage. I think the Secretary of State there said, I've called it a ransom note. Because one of those two things have with each other, you know, clearly it was just a very aggressive wielding of federal power. And people are afraid that more stuff like that might be coming soon. If the midterms are still nine months away, and I know that means that we're tapped in, but not the average person's tapped in at this point. I get the question every now and then from, you know, folks who only tangentially follow politics. Like, how worried should they be about the prospect of Trump pre-rigging or kind of intimidating his way to victory in the midterm elections? I want to put that question to you, like, how legitimate do you think the concern that Donald Trump will soft steel

the midterms is. I'll answer in two ways. Number one, everyone should take this seriously, not because people should be conspiracy theorists, but because we've lived through this before, right? Yeah. I wouldn't have necessarily said this in 2017 in the first year of Donald Trump's presidency, but we have the benefit of 10 years. Donald Trump claimed the Iowa caucuses were rigged when he lost to Ted Cruz.

Ted Cruz didn't win Iowa. He stole it. That's why all of these polls were so wrong and why he got far more votes than anticipated. Bad! He claimed that the popular vote was rigged against him when he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. In addition to winning the electoral college in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally. Obviously, he tried to overturn the 2020 election, which led to a violent insurrection. Because you'll never take...

back our country with weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong. So this should be taken seriously. That being said, the nonpartisan people that I talk to who are experts in election administration, they say that despite all this noise, despite all the fears, despite what you've been told at home, that our system is garbage, it's actually quite resilient. There are many safeguards. There are hardworking Democratic and Republican officials and nonpartisan staff that run these elections. There are judges and courts that take this seriously as a firewall when people do try to get involved with some funny business.

And that you should rest assured that your vote will be counted and will be counted fairly despite all the drama. That's what the experts say. Marshall Cohen, CNN. Today's show was produced by Kelly Wessinger and Avashai Artsy, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Andrea Lopez Crusado, and engineered by Patrick Boyd and David Tadashore. I'm a stead Hearnden. This is today explained.