President Donald Trump on Tuesday signaled his openness to declaring a national emergency ahead of November’s midterms, suggesting he could embrace MAGA media figures’ pitch of a federal takeover of elections.
Real America’s Voice host and conspiracy theorist Wayne Allyn Root, in a post-midnight interview with Trump, tried to “put an idea” in the president’s head that he has the “right” to make such a declaration if the Senate can’t pass the SAVE America Act. That bill would require Americans to prove their citizenship upon registering and to show photo ID to vote in federal elections.
Root went on to claim that the national emergency could only be challenged by a two-thirds vote of each chamber and, if he were to declare one in the next month, “we will get photo ID, proof of citizenship and a limit to mail-in ballots.”
Trump interjected, “Let me just say that stranger things have happened, OK? I’ll leave it at that.”
For well over a year, MAGA activists have tried to push the national emergency plan to Trump and claim to have circulated a draft executive order with the White House that accuses China of interfering in the 2020 election as a pretext for making such a declaration.
The constitutionality of the plot to nationalize elections has already been challenged by several experts, including one former special counsel at the Defense Department, who called it a “madcap” scheme for the midterms.
Ahead of Trump’s speech undermining U.S. election security last month, Root teased that the president would use his remarks to make the “case” for a national emergency declaration for the midterms, predicting that he’d declare one by as early as mid-August.
“This is how Trump destroys them, and this is how we win the midterms,” said Root in a separate appearance on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast.
“I’m telling you, this is the holy grail,” he added. “It’s foolproof. They can’t stop it, and they’re going to panic. They’re going to be hysterical when they realize there’s nothing they can do.”
Other right-wing election deniers mentioned in a June report by Media Matters for America’s Alex Kaplan have described the proposal as a way for the president to give himself “king-like powers” and “be able to make the rules.”
Trump’s comments arrive as he continues to lose steam with his base and suffers from abysmal approval ratings as Republicans worry that the White House is leaving them out to dry on addressing concerns around the Iran war and the cost of living.