An oft-repeated phrase uttered by President Donald Trump after his 2020 election loss is poised to be turned against him in a matter of weeks, former Trump official Miles Taylor asserted Tuesday.
“This year, a corrupt president is walking into a pro-democracy buzzsaw. And he’s desperate because he knows he’s losing,” Taylor wrote in an analysis published on his Substack.
Taylor’s warning comes as Trump has mounted what critics call a sweeping effort to meddle in the midterms. That includes a March executive order that a federal court partly declared unconstitutional and a Justice Department push that has sought nearly every state’s full voter rolls.
“Already, this is the most sweeping campaign of election interference by a sitting president in American history,” Taylor wrote. “That’s the bad news. The good news is that it’s colliding with the most sweeping mobilization ever assembled to stop one.”
Trump’s recent push for more control over the midterms has drawn heavy scrutiny, but the rhetoric critics say eroded Americans’ trust in elections dates back to his 2020 loss and his “stop the steal” campaign, which falsely claimed he had won. As noted by Taylor, however, 2026 would not be “a repeat of 2020, when people scrambled to respond to Trump’s bogus election claims.”
“He’s facing hyper-prepared election officials… prosecutors and sheriffs… armies of lawyers with briefs already drafted… millions of Americans ready to fill the streets… and an independent media operation big enough to shoot down the president’s lies in real time,” Taylor wrote.
“So as we go into the final two weeks before the midterms, let me just say this: if Donald Trump tries to steal this election, WE will come together to turn his old catch phrase against him. WE will ‘stop the steal.’ And if he lays a hand on our ballots, WE will lay down the law.”