Trump’s Rolling Election Coup is, Once Again, Underway

It’s heartbreaking that Democrats must factor in election foul play, instead of just running normal campaigns. A New York Times story put the dire situation in perspective: “Democratic state officials are ramping up their preparations to protect against what they view as a new threat to election security: the federal government.”

Deprived of a bungling assassin to spare America of his act, President Donald Trump’s comedy routine bombed at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner redo in Washington. The New York Times wrote of his, “scripted jokes that fell flat” and he belittled his office when he, “mocked the appearances and careers of individual reporters, some of whom were in the room.”

“The president wasn’t telling jokes so much as he was repeating attack lines one hears at a standard MAGA rally,” the Times said in its review.

It’s questionable whether Trump should have even been invited to an event honoring the free press. It is a bit like inviting Ghislaine Maxwell to an awards ball honoring female empowerment. In the Age of Trump, however, no one would be shocked if this happened too.

As for Trump’s commitment to the Fourth Estate, just last week he asserted that “NBC and ABC fake news” should have their broadcast licenses revoked.

It was deliciously ironic that many of the media who received awards, did so for standing up to the Trump administration’s authoritarian impulses. New York Times reporter Tyler Pager was honored onstage after being subjected to Trumps’ subpoena lawfare. There were many such surreal moments, where Trump looked on as reporters, that he has unmercifully attacked and hounded, were handed hardware for enduring his hard knocks. The Times wrote:

One particularly awkward moment played out when CNN’s Wolf Blitzer welcomed a group of reporters from The Wall Street Journal to the stage to accept an award for their “courageous reporting on President Trump’s past relationship with financier Jeffrey Epstein” that “triggered the release of the so-called Epstein files.”

Mr. Blitzer reminded the crowd that “Trump quickly filed a $20 billion lawsuit against the Journal, revealing reporter Khadeeja Safdar’s home address. Her family had to be relocated. The Journal was kicked off of Air Force One.”

What we witnessed at the Waldorf Astoria was a key battle on freedom’s front lines. Trump introduced a second, equally important front, as he ended his speech at the gilded hotel. He popped out a hat that said, “Trump 2028.”

There was reportedly nervous laughter in the room during his stunt—and with good reason. It’s unclear whether Trump’s hat was a prop or menacing promise of what’s to come. If we look at the sophisticated, and lavishly funded, election denial apparatus Trump has put in place, we should all be a bit on edge.

While Trump is an incompetent fool who behaves like an ADHD monkey on a crack bender, he has an army of lawyers and non-profits who are filled with deadly serious people. They are part of a sprawling Project 2025 machine, working day and night, to keep MAGA in power—regardless of whether their right-wing candidates actually get the most votes.

At the center of this scheme is a Project 2025 organization, the Conservative Partner Institute (CPI), run by former South Carolina Sen. Jim. DeMint (R-SC). CPI raised nearly two hundred million dollars in 2022. It wisely used this windfall to spin off a constellation of nonprofits that work to steal elections under the euphemism “election integrity.”

Much of the funding for such election theft comes from the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation, with an endowment of some eight hundred and fifty million dollars. Public records show that, since 2012, the foundation has spent eighteen million dollars (and counting) supporting conservative groups involved in election tampering.

The individual most responsible for orchestrating the rolling coup is former Bradley Foundation board member Cleta Mitchell. She is also a Senior Legal Fellow at CPI and is the Founder of the Election Integrity Network.

She is also the former Chair of CPI spinoff group, the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF). Mitchell is best known for participating in Donald Trump’s notorious January 2, 2021, telephone call pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes”, which would have narrowly given Trump a victory in Georgia.

Without a shred of evidence, Mitchell says, “those who deny the existence of voter and election fraud are not in touch with facts and reality.” Hans von Spakovsky, her gaslighting colleague at PILF, added, “We know that aliens are registering and actually voting and it’s important to understand that every vote by an alien voids the vote of a citizen.”

In 2017, PILF’s J. Christian Adams, and von Spakovsky got a rare opportunity to make their case that voter fraud is an epidemic when Trump appointed them to a Presidential commission on election integrity. Within months, after the commission was unable to find significant evidence of election fraud, it acrimoniously disbanded. This was nothing short of total humiliation and a complete repudiation of their entire disreputable careers. Yet, these two con artists persist in their mission to steal elections.

Heritage Action—which organized Project 2025--also invested twenty-four million dollars mobilizing supporters and lobbyists who will promote “election integrity.” And groups such as Personnel Policy Operations, using funneled CPI money, pay for the legal defense of election thieves when they are accused of breaking the law.

Perhaps your head is spinning from all these nefarious organizations and individuals who are working to take away your right to vote and sabotage democracy. Well, that’s precisely the point. Project 2025 has created a multi-headed hydra to overwhelm its opponents. It forces democracy’s defenders to play whack-a-mole with a disorienting web of no-name groups engaged in subterfuge.

They are flooding the zone with false allegations and frivolous lawsuits in an effort to make us throw in the towel. As I pointed out last week, there is also an army of Project 2025 organizations in charge of staffing government agencies and judicial operations. To be considered for a job, one must swear fealty to MAGA, claim elections are rigged and profess that Donald Trump beat Joe Biden.

So, if Trump’s minions engineer bogus elections disputes in 2026 or 2028—those making decisions over the fate of democracy will be MAGA toadies—whether in Congress, government agencies, courts, or state lawmakers.

Tragically, it seems the wheels are in motion for another attempted coup. Conservative New York Times columnist David French wrote that key Republican leaders are now laying the groundwork for future chicanery by viciously demonizing Democrats as morally unfit and politically illegitimate to run the country. According to French:

Already, MAGA politicians are raising the stakes of the election. On Tuesday, Steve Scalise, the Republican House majority leader, said, “The Bolshevik takeover of the Democratic Party is in full swing, and communism is on the ballot this November.”

Two days earlier, House Speaker Mike Johnson posted, “The question before Congress is whether we will preserve our constitutional republic OR chart a fundamentally different course that leads us down the ROAD TO COMMUNISM.”

Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama told Newsmax last week: “We probably have four or five senators that didn’t legally win. They shouldn’t be up here.”

Markwayne Mullin, the secretary of homeland security, said that state election officials who do not meet the Trump administration’s demands regarding election security could face prison time.

Steve Bannon has proposed sending ICE agents to the polls to stop a mythical wave of illegal immigrants from voting (perhaps the same mythical illegal immigrants who Trump believes kept him from winning the popular vote in 2016.

It is entirely possible that we will run a repeat of 2020, when the outcome of a narrow election was clouded by accusations of fraud, and MAGA was hellbent on retaining control. In 2026, however, we face a president who has surrounded himself with sycophants and yes men, with years left in a term that has already been marked by grotesque lawlessness and abuses of power.

It’s heartbreaking that Democrats must factor in election foul play, instead of just running normal campaigns. A July 24, 2026, New York Times story put the dire situation in perspective, explaining that, “Democratic state officials are ramping up their preparations to protect against what they view as a new threat to election security: the federal government.”

The story revealed that Democratic attorneys general and about a dozen Democratic secretaries of state were “war gaming” various scenarios. They “held tabletop exercises to prepare for hypothetical scenarios in the November midterm elections.”

“The sad reality now is that the federal government is our biggest concern,” Nick Brown, the Democratic attorney general of the state of Washington, state said, adding, “It used to be that the Department of Justice was our No. 1 partner, helping states prepare for election-related issues.”

These aggressive actions by Democrats are very much needed and greatly appreciated. However, that they are necessary is an indictment against the contemporary Republican Party, as well as bottom feeding organizations like the Public Interest Legal Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, and CPI, which exist to destabilize our country.

We must come to grips with the fact that we are living through a precarious moment where there is an unrelenting, ongoing “conspiracy” to hijack America. Given their high level of cleverness, endless piles of cash, and religious fervor to their unholy cause, we cannot take it for granted that we will emerge victorious.

What these unpatriotic scoundrels are doing to this country is unconscionable. It is beyond destructive to create existential elections every couple years—where defeat would usher in an authoritarian white nationalist theocracy. The moment we stop fighting we will surrender the future. The only solution is to be even more ruthless than Project 2025, until we finally break the backs of these treasonous bastards.

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