Trump sows doubts about 2026 election in effort to sell national voter ID law

The SAVE Act would require prospective voters to provide proof of citizenship in person to register to vote in federal elections with photo ID, supplementing a push to purge non-citizens from voter rolls after the pandemic prompted a loosening of election laws.

“The president believes in the United States Constitution,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters this week outside the West Wing. “However, he believes there has obviously been a lot of fraud and irregularities that have taken place in American elections.”

Nevertheless, Trump told reporters hours later, “If a state can’t run an election,” Congress “should do something about it.”

“If you think about it, the state is an agent for the federal government in elections,” the president said in the Oval Office. “I don’t know why the federal government doesn’t do them anyway, but when you see some of these states, about how horribly they run their elections, what a disgrace it is… The federal government should not allow that — the federal government should get involved.”

Undeterred, Leavitt relied on the same argument a day later, after the NBC interview, during her press briefing on Thursday.

“What the president is suggesting, and I just spoke to him about this, is that Republicans and Democrats in Congress should pass the SAVE Act,” she said.

But Trump’s apparent concerns about election integrity amid persistent claims the 2020 election was stolen from him have dominated news media headlines this month after the FBI’s seizure of 2020 ballots from Fulton County, Georgia, last week, in addition to reports that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who attended the Fulton County raid, took voting machines from Puerto Rico last year.

Republicans have expressed concerns about Trump’s moves and rhetoric having the unintended consequence of suppressing GOP voter turnout.

“He may be trying to set up an excuse for failure, but in the process, he could discourage Republicans from voting,” Republican strategist Charlie Black told the Washington Examiner, citing the U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia in 2020. “We must recognize, though, that he really believes that Democrats steal votes, lack of evidence notwithstanding.”

A Georgia Republican granted anonymity in order to speak candidly agreed that Trump’s election rhetoric suppresses voter turnout, at least in the past.

“As somebody who wants as many people, legal, lawful voters to go and vote in November, I’m worried if he continues to go down this road, it’s going to be a disaster for Republicans,” the source said. “People are tired of hearing about it. It’s old hat.”

But after Trump won the 2024 election, imploring his supporters to help ensure his victory was “too big to rig,” other Republicans, such as party strategist Evan Siegfried, disagreed, arguing, “This is to bring the base back” and “get them focussed on something else” other than the economy, immigration law enforcement, even Second Amendment rights.

“There are always strategies … of changing the topic,” Siegfried told the Washington Examiner. “There were people who felt like Trump was cheated in 2020 who wanted to make sure that the vote was so overwhelming.”

Before Trump lost the pandemic-era 2020 election and his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in protest, the president’s rhetoric was downplayed as words without the threat of action.

Six years later, Democrats believe they now know better, preparing for both Trump and his supporters’ words and actions this fall.

“Donald Trump doesn’t get to decide our elections, the voters do,” Democratic National Committee litigation director Dan Freeman told the Washington Examiner. “In the face of unprecedented attacks on free and fair elections from the Trump administration, the DNC is ramping up our legal and voter protection work, recruiting and training record numbers of volunteers, and coordinating with partners across the country to fight back in the courts.”

Democratic strategist Christopher Hahn added that Trump “knows he’s headed for a congressional wipeout” on Nov. 3.

“Democrats should be forceful in their response to his threats and be prepared to fight to support the will of the people,” Hahn told the Washington Examiner.

To that end, Democrats, who in 2016 pushed claims that Trump colluded with Russia to win his first term in the Oval Office, have amplified Trump’s election rhetoric, while also underscoring scrutiny of the president’s cost-of-living and affordability policies, as well as complaints about his ethics and elitism ahead of November.

“Rather than prioritize the people he was elected to serve, Trump is focused on cozying up to his billionaire friends and donors, raiding county election offices for his baseless investigation into the 2020 election, and doubling down on his reckless economic policies,” DNC spokeswoman Kendall Witmer told reporters this week.

For Republican strategist Duf Sundheim, Trump’s rhetoric renders Democrats “weak and whiny, even when their opposition has a strong constitutional basis.” Sundheim noted that “historically, Trump has backed off when constrained by public opinion or the courts. And while this kind of rhetoric is unnecessary, destabilizing, and a terrible precedent, the electoral system has proven incredibly resilient in the past and is likely to continue to do so through 2026 and beyond.”