Using a report from the Washington Post that Donald Trump and his people will attempt to subvert the midterm election, MS NOW’s David Rohde laid out a simple scenario where the president could single-handedly throw a wrench into the gears.
According to the Post, “A small group of U.S. national security officials has been discreetly advising state governments and congressional lawmakers on how to prepare for the possibility that the Trump administration will attempt to interfere in November’s midterm elections, according to people involved in the effort.”
Former Post reporter Carol Leonning added for MS NOW host Stephanie Ruhle’s benefit, “The Post is not identifying any of the officials and their roles and is not identifying any of the states that are seeking advice, because all of them are afraid of being identified by this administration.”
“Holy cow!” Ruhle exclaimed before turning to national security expert Rohde.
“They are saying flat out that President Trump represents a grave threat to the integrity of the midterm elections,” Rohde explained. “And the worst case scenario for them is that the president just pulls out a piece of intelligence that they can, he can, fabricate one.”
“Or you can find any kind of intercept,” he elaborated. “The NSA picks up so much traffic from so many countries that says anything you want, but it would be the president getting up on election night and saying, the Chinese have hacked every voting machine in Des Moines, Iowa. And I say that because that's a blue spot in a very red state; there's a competitive House race there. There's a very competitive Senate race.”
“And you could have federal you know, you have [FBI Director] Kash Patel come in and saying, ‘We're going to investigate this hacking by the Chinese.’ They could try to seize voting machines, stop voting that day.”
“Another scenario is, people have talked about this for months, ICE agents, ICE operations being carried out right near polling stations,” he added. “It is illegal under federal law for armed federal agents or armed federal soldiers to go into a polling place. Who upholds that law. But ICE agents showing up would be a way to deter people from turning out. And there's, you know, and I'm just I'm talking about election day. He's clearly going to discredit the results after election day.”