The warning signs are everywhere

**Damon John** (0:00)
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**David Pakman** (0:37)
We now need to deal with the unfortunate reality that Donald Trump appears to be preparing to declare an emergency in advance of the November midterm elections. Now this sounds terrifying. This sounds authoritarian. This sounds dictatorial. It is all of those things. But I also want to mention that I'm going to need someone to kind of look me in the eye and explain exactly what that would allow Donald Trump to do without inventing any new powers as if he's writing some authoritarian fan fiction where he gets to do whatever he wants. So I want to talk through with you how this both is a red alert concern, but also without an understanding of what exactly the president is able to do.
We don't want to be scared for nothing. Now all of this goes back to recent comments made by former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb. Fascinating name. If you've seen this guy, fascinating appearance as well. And Ty Cobb weighed in on Donald Trump's Thursday night prime time to the extent that 9 15 p.m. Eastern is prime time, weighed in on Donald Trump's prime time speech and said that it is clear what the point of it is. The point of it is to officially start what we've suspected for a long time that Donald Trump wants to do, which is declare some kind of an election, a some kind of an emergency in advance of the midterm election as a way to potentially shield or prevent Republicans from getting absolutely blasted into outer space by voters, which then will subject Donald Trump to maybe the most humiliating final two years of a presidency in 100 years, probably maybe more. Ty Cobb said, quote, that the speech is intended to add the predicate that he needs to declare an emergency at or about the time of the elections. And Ty Cobb, of course, points to Donald Trump's attacks on voting machines, on mail in ballots, on voter registration, saying it's all rigged. It's been rigged. All of this stuff. They've been warning about ICE agents at polling places and Donald Trump's wet dream of seizing voting equipment that goes all the way back to 2020 Now we should take all of that very seriously. But but because we want to be informed, please.
We also want to think about what voting rights lawyer Mark Elias explained to us last week, which is that elections are fundamentally run by the states. And so Trump can shout emergency, but shouting emergency doesn't let them suddenly take control of every ballot box in the United States. States still run their elections. States would have to cooperate. They would need to be forced to comply or have their own authority taken away, which seems like it would be completely against the law because the Constitution doesn't give Donald Trump any power to suspend an election because the federal government doesn't run elections. Even if you declare an emergency, which we'll get in a moment to what that means. And what does an emergency mean? Even during a war, the president wouldn't be able to suspend elections in all 50 states. Even if he declared martial law, uh, he would not be able to suspend elections in all 50 states. Martial law has been declared many times in American history, mostly by state or local officials. And there were still elections. Presidents didn't suddenly become dictators. Now as far as whether people believe this is going to happen, if you look at the betting odds on Cal she, if you kind of add it all up roughly 62% close to two thirds of the country does believe that Donald Trump will eventually declare such an emergency. So what we need to think about is how we would react and what would actually happen. What can Trump do?
Trump can say, I declare a national emergency. He could do that.
Um, Trump could flood the country with conspiracy theories. He could send federal agents into communities and scare people from going to polling places. Will you be scared off? I don't think so. I certainly am not going to be scared off. His supporters could confront voters. They could confront election workers. They could get themselves into very serious trouble activating and being deputized by Donald Trump in this way. And Republican states could also try to impose the deeply flawed Save America Act. They could on their own implement the voter ID and proof of citizenship rules that Donald Trump wants to implement. They could do that. Could that affect close Senate races? Yeah, it could. Could it affect Ohio, Texas, Michigan? It could.