Trump says he will only accept the midterm results ‘if the elections are honest’ and again pushes to ‘nationalize’ voting
After days of speculation over exactly what President Donald Trump meant when he called on Republicans to “take over” American elections, the commander in chief has clarified that he will accept the 2026 midterm results — but only if they are “honest.”
On Wednesday, Trump told NBC News’ Tom Llamas that he will only accept the results of the 2026 midterm elections if they are “honest,” and that if he believes they aren’t, then “something else has to happen.”
He made the comment after Llamas asked him to clarify what he meant when he called to “nationalize” the elections. Under the U.S. Constitution, the states are given the right to oversee elections. The process has limited input from the federal government.
“I didn’t say ‘nationalize,’” Trump claimed. “I said there are some areas in the country that are extremely corrupt. They have very corrupt elections. Take a look at Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta. There are some areas that are unbelievably corrupt.”
Trump provided no evidence to suggest any kind of corruption related to elections was occurring in any of the cities he listed. The cities he listed typically vote for Democrats.
Further, Trump either forgot or is lying about using the word “nationalize.”
“The Republicans should say, we want to take over, we should take over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places,” Trump told former deputy director of the FBI Dan Bongino in a podcast Monday. “The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
After insisting that he hadn’t used the word, the president pivoted to talk about voter ID laws and Democratic opposition to the SAVE Act, which, if passed, would require voters to present proof of citizenship before they can cast a vote.
“If Democrats don’t want voter ID, if they don’t want voter ID, that means they want to cheat. We can’t allow cheating in elections,” Trump said.
During the 2020 election, Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” him more than 11,000 votes.
Trump’s response focusing on the SAVE Act seems to be in line with current White House messaging. After Trump’s calls to nationalize the election were met with outrage from Democrats and mostly silence from congressional Republicans, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted the president was just endorsing the SAVE Act and not supporting the dismantling of states’ constitutional rights.
“What the president was referring to is the SAVE Act, which is a huge, common-sense piece of legislation that Republicans have supported, that President Trump is committed to signing into law during his term,” Leavitt told reporters.
She made her comments on Tuesday, the same day that Trump told reporters that he thought the federal government should “get involved” in the elections due to “corruption.” He said that if the states “can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over.”
“Look at some of the places — that horrible corruption on elections — and the federal government should not allow that,” he said on Tuesday. “The federal government should get involved.”
