The Brooklyn Rail

Trump would rather cheat than win. He sees cheating as an ultimate value and virtue. In Trump’s world, if you don’t cheat, you’re by definition a loser. All those Americans who fought and died for their country were losers and suckers, as he told his chief of staff John Kelly in 2018. Previous presidents who didn’t use the office to steal as much money for themselves as possible were all losers and suckers. Everyone who plays by the rules is a de facto loser. Everybody who acts for the greater good, even if it means hardship for oneself, is a loser.

When he tried to influence the World Cup by leaning on the corrupt FIFA president, Trump claimed he was a very good athlete and knows a lot about sports. But all he knows how to do in sports is cheat.

He believes cheating is the only way to really win, because it means you’re controlling the process yourself. Otherwise, you’re just following someone else’s rules. Cheating shows initiative and know-how. Cheating is far superior to winning fairly.

Trump is currently doing everything he can to cheat on the upcoming midterm elections, to alter the outcome by changing the rules to favor pro-Trump voters and disenfranchise everyone else. Fewer voters is the goal.

He’s using FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is under the control of the Homeland Security Department, to force the states to change the way they run elections, or risk losing much-needed federal funds. The principal targets of this initiative are the swing states of Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, and Arizona. Trump just fired the last remaining members of the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission, which certifies voting systems, maintains the national mail-voter registration form, and updates election guidance for states. Doing this four months before the midterms is another Trump attempt to sow chaos into the elections. A White House official said “The Slaughter decision gives the President precedence to do so.”

But the US Constitution gives Congress and the States—not the president—the power to regulate federal elections. And the courts have already rejected many of Trump’s attempts to go against the Constitution when it comes to voting. His highest priority goal, passage of the “SAVE America Act,” which would require citizens to produce a passport or a birth certificate to register to vote, has so far failed to gain the support in the Senate necessary to overcome a filibuster. This act would disenfranchise at least 21 million Americans who lack ready access to those documents. In the midst of his most recent attempt, Trump said “We can’t have these elections going on like this anymore,” meaning, we can’t have free and fair elections anymore. It’s a sign of weakness.

Last year, when Trump came back into power, he gutted the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which supports election officials beset by threats, disinformation, and violence. This was the agency that supplied the intelligence that disproved many of Trump’s specious claims after the 2020 election. CISA was actually nominally created by Trump in his first term to handle cyber threats by Russia to influence the vote in 2016. When CISA released a statement calling the 2020 election “the most secure in American history,” Trump fired the person he’d selected and appointed to head CISA, Brandon Wales.

Since then, Trump has decimated the entire structure built to protect election integrity and block foreign interference in American elections. He got rid of the National Security Council’s election security group, and the Foreign Malign Influence Center that blocked efforts by Russia, China, and Iran to influence the 2024 election. Kash Patel completely dismantled the public corruption team at the FBI, and the Foreign Influence Task Force. Almost all of the thirty career lawyers who were part of the Civil Rights Division’s voting section to protect voting rights have resigned or been moved elsewhere.

Replacing all of these watchdogs are partisan groups with the avowed goal of transforming American elections to make MAGA competitive again. Trump would like to discourage as many “Dumocrats and Communists” as possible from voting. He thinks one good way to do that would be to send armed troops to the polls to intimidate voters.

Steve Bannon told Trump last March that putting ICE officers in the airports would be “perfect training for the fall of 2026.” Sending armed agents to the polls is illegal under federal and state law, but Trump continues to threaten to do it, perhaps after invoking the Insurrection Act.

At the same time, many, many citizen groups around the country are organizing to serve as poll workers and monitors and to congregate at polling places to shut ICE or the National Guard out. It’s going to take a lot of boots on the ground to stop them all from voting.