‘Totally insane behavior’: Trump talks up his efforts to meddle with the midterms at Michigan rally

[0:00] it is monday july the 27th 99 days until the midterm elections donald trump returned to the [0:07] campaign trail today ostensibly to trump for swing state candidates but his real strategy [0:12] runs on a parallel track that has nothing to do with winning elections by winning more votes the [0:19] way we all thought it happened and he couldn't help but reveal that today he was in michigan [0:25] a battleground state that's become a top priority for republicans they widely believe that the senate [0:30] seat being vacated by the democrat gary peters is winnable and perhaps the gop's best opportunity [0:36] to pick up a senate seat this year trump was supposedly there to promote republicans economic [0:42] agenda but what he had to say didn't match up with the experiences that many americans are facing [0:48] there was again no mention of the high gas prices caused by his war of choice with iran no mention [0:55] of the bipartisan housing bill that became law without his signature and despite his attempt [1:01] to stonewall it he did however rail against mail-in ballots taking up talking up restrictive voter id and [1:08] onerous proof of citizenship requirements and peddling his voter suppression bill known as the [1:13] save america act a bill that would likely disenfranchise more than 21 million voters who can't readily access [1:22] the right kind of documents that they would need to prove that they were eligible to vote [1:27] which is exactly how he showed his hand the event had all the trappings of a typical campaign rally but [1:32] there's no getting around the fact that donald trump's midterm strategy isn't really about campaigning [1:38] it's not about winning over more voters it's about controlling who gets to vote trump ramped up his [1:46] pressure campaign today against the republican senate majority leader john thune demanding that thune [1:52] cancel the senate's plans a planned august recess unless and until it passes the save america act [2:01] now a handful of republican senators will call them the enablers led by the utah senator mike lee [2:07] say that they support donald trump's call for canceling the break and getting the save america act [2:12] passed trump wants thune to blow up the filibuster in the senate so that he can pass this massive voter [2:18] suppression bill 99 days before an election with only a simple majority in the senate rather than [2:24] the 60 votes that's needed by the filibuster but even that wouldn't be enough because all democrats [2:30] and four republicans are opposed to that that measure so it would only get him to 49 votes but the [2:39] save america act hail mary is just one of trump's strategies he's working on a number of other angles [2:44] back in march he issued an executive order that sought to change the rules around mail-in voting [2:49] and give the federal government more control over elections across the country the executive order [2:55] directed the government to create a federal list of eligible voters it told the u.s postal service that [3:01] it can only deliver ballots to people who are on that list 23 states plus the district of columbia [3:09] challenged that law or that executive order and earlier this year a federal judge ruled in their favor [3:14] noting that the constitution gives states the power to administer administer elections not the [3:20] president since then an injunction has blocked the order from taking effect in those 23 states plus dc [3:27] that were party to the lawsuit and over the weekend the first circuit court of appeals upheld that ruling [3:33] but trump is now running to the supreme court in a last-ditch effort to change the rules around mail-in [3:39] voting today the trump administration filed an emergency appeal asking the justices to reverse the [3:45] rulings and calling the injunction in place quote indefensible the case will appear on the supreme [3:52] court's shadow docket which means that the justices can rule at any time without a hearing and without [3:58] having to explain themselves the save america act that trump and trump's mail-in voting executive order [4:04] have failed so far because they don't stand up to scrutiny it's not our scrutiny they don't live up to the [4:11] standards that congress and the court demands especially when it involves something as important [4:16] as election laws but the attacks on elections are coming from within the administration as well out of [4:23] the public eye in early june when trump installed a housing official and an election denier named bill [4:30] pulte to be the interim director of national intelligence that raised some red flags among democrats and republicans [4:38] alike pulte you probably know this by heart now pulte had no experience in any kind of intelligence [4:46] but it seems that that's not the point because that's not why trump put him in the job trump put [4:50] him in charge of the entire american intelligence apparatus in order to push his long debunked 2020 [4:58] election conspiracies as a means to help undermine this year's midterm elections which republicans [5:05] generally looks set to lose he's pulte has been part of trump's latest gambit to comb through [5:11] thousands of classified government documents looking for evidence that the 2020 election was rigged and [5:17] he's been on a firing spree across the intelligence community announcing his fourth round of layoffs in [5:23] his five-week tenure in the in the in the position pulte is only on the job on a temporary basis but the [5:31] guy trump nominated to succeed him this man jay clayton doesn't instill much confidence either [5:39] during his confirmation hearings two weeks ago clayton refused to say who won the 2020 election [5:44] despite that he's on the verge of becoming the next director of national intelligence a guy who can't [5:50] tell you what happened in the 2020 election that's not actually significant intelligence that's basically [5:55] available googleable fact the senate just cleared one final procedural hearing that sets up a final vote [6:02] for clayton's confirmation later this week these are the actions of an administration that does not [6:07] think it can win based on the merits or on the strength of its political agenda sewing doubts about [6:13] the midterms is no longer a fringe operation it is the the executive branch's official position [6:20] and for his part trump is showing little interest in convincing anyone of anything his efforts are all [6:27] aimed at seizing and holding on to power i'm a little bit upset because in two and a half years [6:35] you may have a different president may i won three times now i'm gonna do it again thank you [6:46] i'm gonna do it it should be easy joining me is zach beecham he's a senior correspondent at vox he's the [6:53] author of the reactionary spirit how america's most insidious political traditions have swept the world [6:59] zach thanks for being with us you know when you saw donald trump put that 2020 hat on um it was at the [7:04] white house correspondence dinner redo on friday night he claimed he was joking but you know he sells that [7:09] merchandise it's it's it's a thing people wear i've seen people with that hat and and carrying [7:14] those signs trump 2028 which according to his math would be four elections i think that he's won [7:19] because he's he's won three he said uh it's it's it's a joke but it's not a joke right i mean this is [7:28] a way in which something that was once in the mainstream or sorry excuse me once out of the [7:32] mainstream of politics is taken into it right you repeat it so many times as a joke because oh no i i [7:37] couldn't possibly be serious about this i would never do this and then it moves into because a [7:42] normalized thing for people to accustom themselves to now in this case i actually don't think it's [7:48] working it's very interesting right because trump has been doing this 2028 trial balloon for a while [7:52] and a bunch of people in his own party have already come out and said they don't believe it could [7:56] happen like they don't believe it's constitutional because it obviously isn't right and even trump has [8:01] said at times i don't think i'm going to do it so part of me thinks that that even he recognizes [8:08] that this is a ridiculous gambit given like what the constitution says the text is very clear on the [8:13] other hand uh i think he really would like to win again right he thinks that he should be able to do [8:20] whatever he wants and so he likes the idea of being able to say i can do this i can run again uh and what [8:26] are you going to do who's going to tell me i can't right so so he's got but he's got the same numbers [8:31] he's got the same numbers everybody else does right he's running in the mid to low 30s in terms [8:37] of popularity which is not uninteresting given that a third of americans don't vote i mean that's [8:42] mathematically donald trump could could win an election but all the things he's doing right now [8:48] aren't the actions of somebody who's trying to win an election the gerrymandering the save america act [8:55] the the mail-in ballots that's all stuff that's designed to keep people who you think don't vote [9:01] for you from voting for you or from voting for somebody else it's a totally bizarre strategy right [9:08] because he could be doing things that could help shave on the margins like if you look at [9:12] authoritarians in other countries in similar circumstances they don't just try to throw the [9:17] election what they do is they try to run up the vote as much as they can in legitimate ways [9:21] and supplement it through the things that might rightly be called cheating right gerrymandering [9:26] as you just mentioned trying to disqualify people from the ballot etc trump is is like it's like [9:30] he's only interested in half of that formula because the policies that he's pursuing on like [9:35] a sort of substantive level are tanking his approval rating the iran war is a total disaster [9:40] he has no plan at all to deal with the formability crisis uh even these own agenda items like focusing [9:47] on this stuff is inherently unpopular because it trades off with doing things that might make actual [9:52] americans want to vote for him so he's taking these sort of like hail mary shots at trying to [9:58] stack the electoral deck in his favor while not doing the things that actually might be able to [10:03] minimize damage in the midterms it's uh it really is a president who seems to believe that if the [10:09] election is legitimate he will lose or his party will lose right because there was this housing bill [10:14] right which which ultimately did pass because it had such an overwhelming majority in both uh houses it was [10:19] a thing that republicans wanted to be able to take home to their constituents and say see we passed a [10:24] bill that actually might help you they didn't haven't passed a lot of bills that would help people [10:29] but what that would have been a big one that would have actually affected housing prices and you could [10:33] you could claim some success for it and donald trump actually worked against it yeah it's again totally [10:39] bizarre right like the only way to make sense of trump's behavior sometimes is that he has these very [10:44] very idiosyncratic views and one of them that are sort of like not connectable to like political [10:50] reality right and one of them is that he's a long time nimby he just like if you listen to the way [10:55] that he talks about housing prices he genuinely sympathizes with people who wants houses to say [11:00] extremely expensive it's his background isn't a real estate guy right like he wants to buy a property [11:05] and then make money on that property increasing in value and he thinks everybody should be able to do that [11:10] that's like so his his weird idiosyncrasy here right his personal background is actually directly [11:16] antithetical to what the country as a whole needs or what would make him more popular right which is [11:20] to say trying to lower the cost of living it's the number one issue in virtually every poll for most [11:25] americans and what is he doing he's doing the exact opposite of that right and he doesn't i don't i [11:30] don't know i don't know if no one's there to tell him i don't know if he just doesn't understand [11:33] it i don't know if he's just old and ornery and stuck in his ways and won't change but yeah he [11:39] the housing bill's a perfect example he just does not is i think in many ways completely out of [11:44] contact with political reality interesting thing that's happening john ossoff is a big part of it [11:48] but most most members of the senate are doing this where they're asking any appointee for a job or [11:53] anybody who's testifying in the senate to uh talk about the 2020 election given that donald trump is [11:59] still talking about the 2020 election and who won it uh jay clayton for instance the head of the [12:03] southern district of new york noted for its independence in terms of um federal prosecutors jay [12:09] clayton is the guy who is now set to become the director of national intelligence the smart guy [12:14] he's he's had a lot of prosecutorial experience he was with the uh the securities and exchange [12:18] commission largely respected as a guy who has capabilities unlike uh bill pulte even he couldn't [12:25] bring himself to say it none of these trump appointees will say in public under oath that that [12:32] donald trump lost the 2020 election or even conversely that uh joe biden won the 2020 election they'll [12:38] just say uh it was certified for joe biden i think this is really worrisome that these are [12:43] senior government officials and they're still getting past the senate they're still getting [12:47] approved because this is like a no-win situation from the point of view of senators right because [12:54] trump will pull a nominee if they say that joe biden won the 2020 election he will withdraw that [13:00] nomination and he will pick somebody else because for him this is an absolute litmus loyalty test [13:04] he values loyalty above all else and if you are disloyal to trump by saying that biden won the [13:09] election you're you're done you're not trustworthy you're out uh right which is to say if you are a [13:15] reliable public servant who's willing to tell the truth even when it's politically inconvenient [13:19] you are not useful to this white house and so then senators have to blanket not confirm [13:25] anyone the trump administration nominates to a sensitive position or they have to allow people to [13:30] say this ridiculous stuff this obviously false stuff and still prove them anyway now it was a [13:35] democratic senate maybe no one would be appointed right maybe they'd be able to set a red line there [13:40] but in a republican senate a lot of republicans and we all basically know this for a fact even if [13:45] they don't publicly say it they know that this is totally insane behavior they know it's pathological [13:51] and they approve them anyway out of party loyalty because that to them is sort of the lesser of the [13:55] two evils here and it's as you say worrying on a sort of an elemental level for a democracy right [14:01] because that's what you have elected representatives for is to use their judgment to say that this is [14:06] wrong and this is damaging and regardless of whether or not i'm on a political team i should be doing [14:11] something to preserve the essential integrity of the political system they are not doing that they're [14:16] they're doing the exact opposite of that in these cases