The President is preparing to steal the midterm elections

At 3 p.m. this afternoon, Donald J. Trump was already seated in his high-backed leather chair in the Oval Office as the cameras focused in on him and the row of men standing shoulder to shoulder behind him. The event was supposed to be about his new $700 million plan for what he calls America’s beautiful “clean coal” industry. Instead, he spent much of the afternoon insulting his fellow Americans and, in the process, explained how he intends to interfere with the outcome of the upcoming midterm elections. And in doing so, he may have revealed one of the greatest threats facing American democracy over the next five months.

Within minutes of this event starting, he had already wandered through bizarre mockeries and complaints. He called Graham Platner, the Democratic Senate candidate from Maine, “a basket case.” He mocked James Talarico, the Democratic Senate candidate from Texas, by comparing him to “Alfred E. Newman,” the gap-toothed mascot from Mad Magazine. When speaking about Iran’s Supreme Leader, he said that “in some circles he has a very good reputation actually,” then added that he would be “honored” to meet him and would be “respectful.” Then he drifted back into the old grievance loop, attacking Biden as “never the sharpest guy” and bragging that his “Where’s Hunter?” shirt was once “the number one shirt anywhere in the world.”

Almost nothing about the event unfolded the way he and his handlers must have imagined. As the cameras continued rolling, Trump repeatedly appeared to fall asleep. His face looked noticeably swollen, his eyes heavy and deeply bagged, and he seemed increasingly disconnected from the conversation unfolding around him. The man who was supposed to be promoting a major energy initiative looked like he was struggling to make it through the next hour.

But underneath the latest public spectacle coming out of the White House, something far more important was happening. Because here is the thing about this president, even at his most incoherent, even when he is drifting off in front of the cameras and reaching for insults instead of answers, he tells us the truth about what he is planning. He always does. And that is exactly why we cannot afford to get bored or numb with his antics. We cannot let ourselves scroll past one more clip of him saying something outrageous and tell ourselves it does not matter, that it is just Trump being Trump, that it is noise. It is not noise. Every single thing this man says is of the utmost importance, because he is telling us, out loud and on camera, exactly what he intends to do. And this afternoon, somewhere between mocking a Senate candidate and praising the Ayatollah, he told us how he plans to handle an election he already knows he is going to lose.

He spent the entire day setting it up. Over the span of an hour and a half this afternoon, he posted, “Look what’s happening in California, the Dumocrats, right before our very eyes, are stealing the Vote. I hope the Republicans are watching so that they can finally pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT!” He also posted, “I believe we have the Most Dishonest Elections of any Country, anywhere in the World!” And then tonight, after the event, he posted again about California, writing that “Our Election process is as bad, or worse, than any Third World Country,” and that “They don’t wait seven days to tell you who won, rigging the Election during each and every one of them.” And at the event itself, he said much of the same thing, bragging about his own past wins by saying, “they tried with me. They did it successfully the second time. The third time we made it too big to rig.” He told the room to watch California, where he claimed it would take “seven or eight days to count the votes,” and where, in his words, “the numbers are looking strange because without any vote counting, the numbers dropped very precipitously for two Republicans.”

He is betting his most loyal followers won’t put two and two together. Because he says we have the most dishonest elections of any country anywhere in the world. The most dishonest on earth. But he won. Twice. So either he won under the most dishonest election system in the world, which would make his own victories meaningless, or it is not true, or he does not actually believe a word of it. There is no version of this where the math works. Because “rigged” has only ever meant one thing to Donald Trump. It means Trump lost. Every election he wins is clean and beautiful and historic. Every election he or his side loses is stolen.

Because the complaints are never just complaints. They are a sales pitch. And he is pulling out all stops to get us to buy into his lies, including his obsession with the SAVE America Act.

He posted a whole list about it again this morning. All voters must show photo ID. All voters must show proof of citizenship. No mail-in ballots, except for illness, disability, military, or travel. And then, bolted onto an elections bill for no reason other than to rile people up, “No men in women’s sports” and “No transgender mutilization surgery for our children.”

He recited the same list from behind the Oval Office desk this afternoon. And this is the part we have to notice. The manufactured crisis and the pre-packaged solution arrived on the same day, within hours of each other, because they are not two things. They are one thing. You declare the fire, and then you sell the country the extinguisher you happened to be holding the whole time.

This is the modern version of authoritarian propaganda. Simple solutions to complex problems. Or in Trump’s case, many of the problems he talks about don’t actually exist and are simply there to further radicalize his base.

What made today different, what genuinely concerned me, was when he blurted out that he has started building the machine to overturn, interfere with, block, or challenge our next major elections in November. He said it while talking about appointing Bill Pulte as acting Director of National Intelligence. Not the head of one agency. The head of the entire United States intelligence community.

A reporter asked him a straightforward question. Given the pushback, even from Senate Republicans, why did he think Pulte was the best person for the job? And Trump did what he always does. He rambled. He praised Pulte’s “high integrity.” He went off on a long tangent about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And then, buried right in the middle of all that, he said Pulte “may find out some things about the rigged elections, etc., etc.”

The President of the United States explained that the man he just put in charge of all of our intelligence agencies is there to “find out some things about the rigged elections.” He did not say Pulte would protect our elections or help keep us safe from foreign threats, which is the actual job of the Director of National Intelligence. And then he told us the term, twice. “It’s an acting position,” he said. “He’s not going to be permanent.” He was “interviewing people right now,” and Pulte was just “somebody to take it over for a little while.”

And when he was asked a follow-up question about whether Pulte had the necessary national security experience to take on that position, Trump answered, “Well, I do, and I think he does actually because he’s smart.” Then he compared Pulte to himself. “A lot of national security, I wasn’t greatly experienced in national security, and I think I’ve done a really great job with it.”

In other words, when asked point-blank whether the man has the qualifications to lead American intelligence, the President’s answer was that qualifications do not really matter. Being loyal is enough. And that is the whole point. The job was never about intelligence. He told us what it was really about: Trump’s plan to stay in power regardless of how we, the people, actually vote.

And he was careful to emphasize that Pulte would serve in an acting capacity. An acting director can remain in that position through at least the end of this year. Through November. Through the midterm elections. The word “temporary” is not reassuring. If anything, it sounds closer to a confession.

And that matters because it would likely be difficult, even with a Trump-backed Congress, to get someone like Pulte confirmed. But as an acting director, Trump doesn’t need confirmation. He can place the least qualified, but most loyal, person in charge of the nation’s intelligence apparatus and still remain within the boundaries of the law.

And if we want to know what “find some things” looks like when this particular man has the power to do it, we already know how far he will go to prove loyalty to Trump. At his last job, running the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Pulte sent the Justice Department criminal referrals against four Democrats who had investigated Trump. New York Attorney General Letitia James. Former Congressman Eric Swalwell. Senator Adam Schiff. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. He also referred Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. That is the skill he is known for. Taking a position of power and turning it into a weapon against the president’s enemies. And now he has been handed the keys to every intelligence agency we have.

Donald Trump has been screaming that elections are rigged for years. We have heard it a thousand times. What changed today is the capacity of his propaganda. Because an intelligence chief can produce intelligence. He can manufacture a document, surface a “raw” and unverified report, declassify exactly what is useful and bury the rest, and hand the president a piece of paper that looks official enough to call an election into question. The distance between a sore loser and an actual attempt to overturn a result is the machinery. And today, we watched him put the last piece of that machinery into place. The false claim. The proposed law. And now the loyalist in the chair, whose stated job is to find the proof.

I am not the only one who saw it. Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been sounding this alarm for months, warning of a coordinated effort to try to interfere in the 2026 midterms. He said we have “a president that can’t get over the fact that he lost in 2020 and now in kind of a Nixonian effort is going to try to do everything he can to make sure he doesn’t get another beating in 2026.” And on Pulte specifically, Warner said, “If he’s been able to manipulate and weaponize mortgage information,” continuing with “think about if you got the keys to all of the intelligence agencies.”

Trump is building the excuse to reject a loss before a single midterm vote has been counted. And there is really only one reason a person builds that machine ahead of time. You build it because you already know you are going to lose.

This is the oldest authoritarian move there is. You do not wait for the election and then cry foul. You poison the well first. You tell people for months that the system is rigged, so that when the results come in and they are not what you wanted, half the country is already primed to believe the count was stolen. And then the “remedy,” the purges, the prosecutions, the claims that certain votes and certain people were illegal, looks justified to the people who believed you. Warner reached for the word Nixonian, and he is right, but Nixon at least still felt he had to resign. What we are watching now is a man who has spent a year learning that there are no consequences, assembling the tools to make sure he never has to.

Today was a lot. There were over a dozen other atrocities I wanted to share with you. Some days are just like that now. And so I sat with all the stories and tried to bring the one that mattered most. And as I wrote this, it became even more real what we are up against, because I do not want to have to keep sharing about his reckless attacks, or his endless nodding off. Or how he is looking more ill by the day. I’d rather spend the evening with my husband and daughters.

But I know that is what authoritarians want. They want us to feel hopeless and overwhelmed by the chaos and cruelty. And I reminded myself that I write these every night so that there will come a day when we can fully live again. Where this will be a memory of dark days and a lesson for future generations. That is why we have to keep calling it what it is, even if it feels like Groundhog Day. Because that is how they win. They count on our exhaustion. They count on us looking away. They count on us believing that because the outrage is constant, it somehow matters less. But it doesn’t.

And even on the days when it is hard to see a future without Trump’s nonstop terror, we are already seeing glimmers of better days. The SAVE America Act that he spent all day demanding failed today. In the Senate, this afternoon, it went down forty-eight to fifty. He could not even get a simple majority, let alone the sixty votes he would need. And the same four Republicans who have broken with him on this before broke with him again. Susan Collins. Lisa Murkowski. Mitch McConnell. Thom Tillis. Four members of his own party stood against it. And if that wasn’t enough, the Kennedy Center began ordering its staff to remove Donald Trump’s name from the building, less than a week after a federal judge ruled it had been added there illegally. The judge wrote that it was crystal clear the Center was named for President Kennedy, that Congress named it, and that only Congress can change it. Trump put his own name on the front of a national memorial on the banks of the Potomac, and a court told him no, and the name is coming back down.

The machine Trump keeps building to stay in power is real, and we have to see it clearly for what it is. But we also need to remember that the man building it is far weaker than he wants us to believe. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.

Picture of the day: My daughter took this today while we were out running errands. It was a beautiful day, and a good reminder that normal life should be normal and is not supposed to involve one man destabilizing the entire world.

Sources:

https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/senate-rejects-another-gop-push-to-revive-save-america-act/

https://www.npr.org/2026/06/04/nx-s1-5751145/save-act-senate-vote-trump

https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/02/politics/trump-pulte-director-intelligence-election

https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/03/politics/trump-pulte-dni-election-security-analysis

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-pulte-acting-director-national-intelligence-trump/

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5622573-swalwell-fhfa-pulte-trump-schiff-california/

https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/04/politics/kennedy-center-trump-name-memo