This Is How Trump Prepares America to Reject an Election

He’s already telling his supporters the system is rigged, floating unconstitutional ideas, and priming them for chaos if Republicans lose.

As he proved on January 6, 2021, Donald Trump is good at inflaming a crowd. He was the one who told his followers to march to the Capitol to fight the certification of the 2020 election, unleashing an attack on the People’s House. By the time it was over, 174 police officers had been injured, and the Capitol had been overrun.

The rioters were driven by Trump’s specious claim that the 2020 election had been “stolen” from him by corrupt local officials in states like Georgia and Arizona and in big cities like Philadelphia and Detroit. He began banging this drum even before votes were cast. After Joe Biden won, Trump launched a concerted campaign to prove he had been cheated. His MAGA base believed him, and millions were outraged.

This time around, with ten months to go before people vote in the midterms, Trump is repeating those claims—but on steroids. I believe his goal is a repeat of January 6, only this time at state capitals and polling sites around the country. He wants chaos, hoping it will blunt a “blue wave” that could flip the House and possibly the Senate from Republican to Democrat.

In recent days, Trump has called for the Republican Party to somehow “nationalize” elections. In an interview with podcaster—and former deputy FBI director—Don Bongino, he said, “The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over. We should take over the voting, the voting in at least 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.’”

Though he didn’t name the places, we know he’s talking about swing states that are hotly contested and “blue” states where Democrats are in power. According to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, he has focused on states like California and New York, where immigrants tend to vote for Democrats. Trump’s solution? Requiring everyone to present proof of citizenship—such as a passport or birth certificate—when they register to vote.

Setting aside the constitutional issues for a moment, consider how difficult compliance would be. First, only about half of U.S. citizens have a valid passport. Second, millions of people do not possess birth certificates. Altogether, the Brennan Center for Justice estimates that 21.3 million citizens lack ready access to documents proving their citizenship.

Under the current system, some states require identification or proof of residence, while others do not. Arizona requires proof of citizenship. Why the patchwork? Here’s the most important reason: under the Constitution, elections are controlled by the states. That authority comes from Article I, Section 4, Clause 1, which gives states the power to determine the “Times, Places and Manner” of federal elections.

Never one to honor rules or norms, Trump would attempt to leap over the Constitution with a federal law. His chances are slim—too many House members and senators want to protect their home states’ prerogatives. But legislation isn’t Trump’s real goal. He wants Americans—and the world—to view our election system as so corrupt that its results should not be accepted, especially if his party loses.

For Trump, this is personal. It goes back to 2016, when he declared that, despite the results—which gave Hillary Clinton a 2.9 million–vote margin—he had actually won the popular vote. His claim was that millions of “illegal” votes were cast by immigrants who were not citizens. So consumed by this grievance, Trump created a commission in May 2017 to investigate voter fraud. It uncovered no evidence of meaningful fraud and quietly disbanded without issuing findings.

The commission failed because the fraud Trump claims simply does not exist. In state after state, investigations—some spanning decades—have found only a handful of cases. In Georgia, investigators uncovered 23 cases out of 64 million votes cast over 27 years. In Arizona, there were 36 cases out of 22 million votes cast over 25 years.

Allergic to facts and determined to undermine the system, Trump still refuses to accept that he lost the 2020 election and talks about it constantly. In January, he told an international gathering in Davos that the election was “rigged” and that “people will soon be prosecuted for what they did.” Shortly afterward, he flexed federal muscle when the Justice Department dispatched the FBI to Georgia to seize 2020 ballots and documents from the Fulton County election headquarters. Multiple reviews found no discrepancies. But that was never the point. The point was to stage suspicion and sow doubt.

Trump’s allies have begun to echo his false alarms. Most notably, Steve Bannon—chief of staff during Trump’s first term—has called for using armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to patrol polling places. “You’re damn right we’re gonna have ICE surround the polls come November,” he told his audience. “We will never again allow an election to be stolen.”

ICE, as many Americans know, is already facing stiff resistance in cities where masked agents have carried out mass sweeps. In Minneapolis, agents have killed two people and terrorized communities. The threat to deploy ICE at polling places naturally evokes fear—layered atop the anger Trump’s followers will feel as the election approaches and his claims intensify.

Free and fair elections are the foundation of democracy, and the United States has long been served by a system widely regarded as the freest and fairest in the world. But Trump excels at manufacturing controversy and division where none exist. His narcissism is so extreme that he is willing to sacrifice public trust in a system that works—and push the MAGA faithful toward violence—in service of his own ego. He is playing a profoundly dangerous and stupid game. He doesn’t care.