White House downplays Trump’s calls for Republicans to ‘nationalize’ voting

“The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” the president told Bongino. “We have states that are so crooked, and they’re counting votes.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt faced a number of questions regarding the president’s comments during a Tuesday afternoon gaggle with reporters. Leavitt repeatedly claimed that Trump was referring to the SAVE Act, a bill on Capitol Hill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote, when he told Republicans to “nationalize the voting.”

Leavitt called the legislation “a huge common-sense piece of legislation that Republicans have supported” and that Trump has vowed to sign into law.

Trump “spoke with the speaker directly about that yesterday, about the need to get that bill on the floor for a vote because it provides very common-sense measures for voting in our country, such as voter ID,” Leavitt said.

“I don’t think any rational person who’s being honest with themselves would disagree with the idea of requiring citizens of this country to present an ID before casting a ballot in a federal election, or, frankly, in any election, and that’s something the president wants to see happen,” she continued before clarifying that Trump “believes in the United States Constitution.”

Reporters additionally pressed Leavitt on Trump’s targeting of 15 states in particular, where he claimed that “we should take over the voting.”

The press secretary said that Trump “was referring to specific states in which we have seen a high degree of fraud.”

“If you look at states like California or if you look at New York City, for example, noncitizens are allowed to vote in elections,” she stated. “That just creates a system, an electoral system, that is absolutely ripe with fraud, and you cannot deny the fact that, unfortunately, there are millions of people who have questions about that, as does the president.”

Earlier in the day, White House officials told the Washington Examiner that Trump “wants all states to take the security and integrity of elections seriously.”

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Those officials pointed out that more than a dozen states do not require photo identification for voters, while other states do not conduct routine voter roll maintenance and “are unwilling to comply with federal law and their election records, including voter rolls, with federal law enforcement.”

White House officials additionally cheered “more than a dozen states” that they say “have demonstrated a commitment to ensuring that only citizens can vote by working with USCIS to clean up state voter rolls.”