MS NOW host Lawrence O’Donnell on Wednesday called out President Donald Trump and the potential “mystery” of why unnamed federal agents were monitoring key polling places on Tuesday in Michigan on the eve of the battleground state’s primary elections.
“That mystery could explode in our faces on election night in November,” said O’Donnell.
“The mystery might then be revealed as a key piece of Donald Trump’s possible plan to steal the election in Michigan in November to prevent the Democrats from winning control of the United States Senate,” The “Last Word” host continued.
While the Department of Justice has long overseen an election monitoring program with the stated aim of protecting federal civil rights laws, Trump has baselessly claimed since the 2020 presidential election that it was stolen and that Michigan played a key part.
He has also repeatedly floated running for a third unconstitutional presidential term.
The DOJ announced Tuesday that it was monitoring polling sites in four Michigan cities and that staffers from the Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section and Michigan’s U.S. Attorney’s Office for both the Eastern and Western Districts were assigned to oversee the primaries.
O’Donnell acknowledged that this might well have been business as usual, stating, “There is a very strong chance that they were doing absolutely nothing. It’s a very, very strong chance that the way they did nothing is an indication of the way they will do nothing in November.”
He nonetheless warned there’s also a chance that Trump is “plotting to do something criminal on election night” in Michigan and other states, and that “the mystery” of what officials were doing Tuesday might be revealed “in the worst possible, sudden way” during the midterms.
Numerous conservative commentators and MAGA pundits have warned that the November elections could spell disaster for the GOP, with many noting that the president’s ongoing war on Iran, resulting inflation and high everyday costs are contributing to widespread discontent.
Trump has frequently dismissed affordability concerns in favor of rehashing baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, and recently suggested that a third presidential term should be his “reward” for the supposedly stolen proceedings that elected Joe Biden.
O’Donnell noted nobody “has more experience” in dealing with Trump’s “lies and threats” about Michigan elections than the state’s Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who won 83% of the vote Tuesday to become the Democratic nominee for governor in the state.
He noted she was decorating her Christmas tree in 2020 with her young daughter when MAGA voters who heeded Trump’s calls to reject the presidential election results at the time stood outside her house screaming, “Stop the steal,” while “brandishing their guns.”
O’Donnell reminded viewers that Trump tried to bully Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger into changing the vote total in 2020 to put him one vote ahead of Biden, and wondered why he’s so concerned these days with monitoring polling sites.
“And so the mystery remains, what were they doing?” O’Donnell said.
“What were they doing in Michigan?” he continued. “What were the Trump agents doing at polling places in Michigan yesterday and last night? And if that was a scouting trip for November ― if that was a planning trip for November, what can be done to stop Donald Trump from stealing the election?”