In This Episode
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TRANSCRIPT
Marc Elias: Donald Trump has actually been sabotaging his own legislative agenda, and now his own nominees to pass a bill that, as you point out, Republicans in the Senate, it’s not just they can’t pass it, but they actually don’t even have a majority to pass it. Like, there were Republicans who don’t want to pass it.
Jane Coaston: I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show deeply inspired by this heartwarming tale of true love between President Donald Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
[clip of President Donald Trump] He was in a hotel, and I met him, and we fell in love. Deeply in love. [laughter]
Jane Coaston: Touching. On today’s show, we talk about Trump’s continued attacks on the right to vote with democracy docket founder, Marc Elias. Before we get into all that, here’s what we’re following today, Wednesday, June 17th.
[clip of President Donald Trump] And the one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover. I didn’t want that, and who knows what would have happened.
Jane Coaston: During a speech at the G7 Summit in France today, Trump pondered hypotheticals, like which presidents he would and would not want to be. Look, you know I love a presidential hypothetical trivia time, but maybe not here. And while I wish I could play all of the nonsensical comments Trump made, I’ll instead let him give you an update on the US-Iran deal that’s supposedly set to be formally signed in Switzerland on Friday. Maybe.
[clip of President Donald Trump] The deal we reached with Iran on Sunday will be signed shortly, tomorrow, maybe the next day. [?] Subject deals all my my whole life is all about deals. That’s all I ever did is make deals. And crazy things happen with deals.
Jane Coaston: What? But when and if the deal will actually be signed is not the only confusing thing about it. Exactly what the US-Iran deal entails has also been up in the air. But after days of secrecy, senior US officials dictated the memorandum of understanding with Iran to journalists today. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to read the draft, which Iran has not released. According to the officials, the draft agreement includes provisions to ensure Lebanon’s, quote, “territorial integrity,” after Israel’s latest attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanese territory. In return, the U.S. will move to terminate wide-ranging sanctions against Iran. The officials said the U.S. draft of the agreement also secures toll-free passage of the Strait of Hormuz for 60 days, but it does not preclude fees in the future. Welcome to how much money does it take for Republicans to overlook a Trump endorsement? On Tuesday, we found out. At least for one Georgia race, that is. The answer? More than $100 million. That’s what Rick Jackson’s campaign spent to defeat Trump-endorsed Bert Jones in the Republican runoff for Georgia governor. It was another rare example of the president’s choice falling short in a primary battle. Jackson, a billionaire healthcare tycoon, personally supplied most of the money his campaign spent to persuade Republican voters to overlook Trump’s advice. Trump endorsed Lieutenant Governor Bert Jones last year, praising Jones’s, quote, “Courage and wisdom” in a Truth Social post. I guess Courage and Wisdom isn’t as sexy as $100 million. Jackson will now face Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta in November. The World Cup started last week and the underdogs are looking good. Four matches on Monday ended in ties. Now that might sound anticlimactic, but it was the most in a single day of men’s World Cup play since 1958, and all of them could technically be considered upsets. The 61st, 67th, and 85th ranked teams in FIFA’s world rankings were all underdogs in their first matches of the World Cup. And while none of them won on Monday, none of them lost. The biggest win that wasn’t a win saw Cape Verde hold Spain nil-nil in what easily has been the biggest shocker of the tournament to this point. In case you didn’t know, Cape Verde is making its World Cup debut. Spain is ranked number two and favored to win the whole thing. And that’s the news. Let’s talk about voting and how President Trump is willing to risk national security to make it harder for you to do it. Trump has been trying to get his Save America Act passed for months. The bill would require not just ID but proof of citizenship to vote, effectively disenfranchising Americans who don’t happen to have their passport or birth certificate handy, which is millions of Americans. Trump is so deeply committed to this terrible bill that today he pressured Senate Republicans into delaying the confirmation hearing for his Director of National Intelligence nominee Jake Clayton. And on Truth Social, he said he’d refuse to sign any legislation reauthorizing a major intelligence security law unless that legislation is attached to the Save America Act. So what does Trump’s determination to get this bill passed mean for November? To find out, I spoke with Marc Elias, founder of Democracy Docket. Marc, welcome back to What a Day.
Marc Elias: Thanks for having me back.
Jane Coaston: So Trump thwarted his own director of national intelligence nominees confirmation to pressure Congress into passing his Save America Act. Which has run into a lot of problems in the Senate mostly because Republicans think it’s unpassable. What is in this bill that Trump is so obsessed with?
Marc Elias: Yeah, I’m glad you you framed it the way you did, because as you say, Donald Trump has actually been sabotaging his own legislative agenda and now his own nominees to pass a bill that as you point out, Republicans in the Senate, it’s not just they can’t pass it, but they actually don’t even have a majority to pass it. Like there were Republicans who don’t wanna pass it. Now why is that? What the Save America Act would do is number one, it would make it much harder for people to register to vote, particularly we’ve heard a lot about married women who changed their last names. And that’s because you’d have to prove proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. And what that means in short is to register to vote, you’d either have to have a unexpired passport or a original birth certificate. And a lot of people don’t have either of those documents. Real IDs wouldn’t do the trick. No other document would do the trick. Just one of those two things. And as you know, as well as I do, Donald Trump’s not so good on the whole birth certificate proving citizenship. Right? Like, after all, like–
Jane Coaston: Kind of notoriously terrible at that.
Marc Elias: Correct right so like it’s all kind of a trap anyway, that ultimately the only people who will be able to register to vote are people who have unexpired passports and the people who Donald Trump believes their birth certificate is real. So that’s one part of the Save act, but the Save acts gets worse from there, right? Because it’s been larded up with a bunch of other provisions when it moved from being the Save act to the Save America Act. Um, and this would, for example, cripple voting by mail, right? It would require not just ID to vote in person, but ID to vote by mail. Go ahead and try and figure out how the hell you do that. Right? So, so it’s a, it’s a bad voting bill that, you know, like I said, doesn’t even have 50 votes in the U.S. senate, no less a filibuster proof majority. And Donald Trump knows that, but he is setting up a permission structure when this November Republicans lose control of the Senate and the house. He’s going to say there was massive voter fraud. He’s already saying that about California in the primaries. And he’s going say that part of the reason why there’s massive voter fraud is because Democrats blocked the SAVE Act.
Jane Coaston: We’ll get back to my conversation with Marc Elias in a moment because that’s what I voted for. But if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Spotify and Apple podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]
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Jane Coaston: Let’s get back to my conversation with Marc Elias. I’m glad you mentioned California because Trump has been claiming that California’s primary election was quote, “rigged.” And a US attorney in California says his office has multiple election fraud investigations in progress. Now one, what do you think it says about Donald Trump that he thinks a Republican finishing third in the L.A. mayoral election is suspicious? And two, what do we know about these investigations? I’m tempted to use air quotes and yet I won’t because I I suspect that there are actually people getting doors knocked on by members of the you know the federal government.
Marc Elias: Absolutely. I mean, look, Donald Trump said after the 2016 election, this is an election he won, before 2020, he said after the 2016 election that he believes he lost California because of fraud. Like literally he said that that he would have won California if there had not been illegal votes. He lost by millions of ballots, right? Like I once suggested in the run-up to the 2024 election, rather than asking Donald Trump, you know, whether, you know why he says he won elections that he didn’t. That the legacy media should just ask him what state he agrees he did lose. What is the state that he lost that wasn’t a result of fraud? Because Donald Trump has regularly claimed there was fraud everywhere that he lost. Now, so that is like the baseline going into this. I’d also note that if you were trying to engage in fraudulent outcomes, why would you count slowly and transparently over time, right? Like, even the fact you were, California’s trying to do the thing that Donald Trump says, wouldn’t you do it in the dark of night, on election night, when there’s like a lot of other things being attention to, why would do it through a methodical, transparent vote count over time? So, it’s all just made up. It’s all nonsense, it’s all lies, and it’s efforts to discredit California vote counting, because Donald Trump’s only chance of holding control of the House is to claim that there was massive vote fraud and therefore people who won elections shouldn’t be seated. Well, you know, maybe you could do that in Rhode Island and affect one seat. Maybe you could do it in New Jersey, affect what? Two seats. He’s going to California because for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks. It’s where the seats are, right? He can claim vote fraud in California and it’s dozens of seats now he ought of all of a sudden puts in play. So that’s the Trump piece of this. With respect to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Look, this has been a shameful display. Like you have the the the federal, the chief federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, the US attorney, announcing fraud investigations, uh which, you know, like federal prosecutors are not supposed to announce anything. Like they’re not they’re not supposed to announce publicly that they’re investigating things. Number one, it’s not good if they’re actually investigating things to tip people off. But number two, they’re not supposed to put themselves in the middle of the political process. Even worse than that though, the guy from New York, you know, Jay Clayton, the guy who’s now up for ODNI, he went on CNBC and and told Joe Kernen that he was worried about the opportunity for fraud in California elections. And when that happened, honestly, I went on TV and some podcasts and I was like, why the hell is the top federal prosecutor in New York City opining on election vote counting in California and then like he got his job offer and occured to me he hadn’t proved himself to be a made-man election denier like he never had the chance to deny the outcome of elections before so he was taking this chance to get to get this promotion. We’re going to see a lot more of this we’re already seeing raids in Ohio of voter registration groups, we’ve seen the indictment of the southern poverty law center. We tend to pay a lot of attention to the weaponization of government when it involves people like James Comey or Tish James, but we need to understand that the weaponisation of government is also these efforts to intimidate voters and voting organizations to not do their work.
Jane Coaston: Yeah, and it was crazy living in California, how quickly I started hearing claims that the California primary was rigged. Like, Trump said Democrats cheated on June 3rd, one day after the election. What does this mean for the November midterms in California and beyond? As to your point, like, Democrats are probably going to do well in the midterms, and Trump is going to argue all of that is fraudulent.
Marc Elias: Right, and they’re going to do well in California in the midterms.
Jane Coaston: Right.
Marc Elias: Like remember, it was California that passed by popular referendum the ballot measure that added that changed the composition of the districts so that Democrats are likely to gain five more seats. So it’s like not a surprise that he is he is targeting California, but I think that this is a sign of what’s to come. Like this is a leading indicator of what what Donald Trump and the Republicans’ plans are, which is they’re gonna make it harder for people to vote, and when that doesn’t succeed, they’re gonna try to cheat. And so they need to make it harder for you to vote and easier for them to cheat. And this is part of the easier to cheat part of that formula. And we all need to just understand that that’s what’s happening. And if I can again call out the legacy media here, you know, the New York Times issue put out an editorial that basically criticized California’s vote counting process and how long it took. And you know, and like, first of all, I don’t know why the New York Times is like wading into, again, like the arcane question of like, how quickly elections are tallied, but they’re just doing Donald Trump’s bidding. And I pointed out, you know, in Democracy Docket that the effect of this is not just to give aid and comfort to Republicans in California, but you know let’s just go back to 2020. Nevada didn’t tally its votes for eight days. Pennsylvania, remember when Pennsylvania was called? Pennsylvania wasn’t called till the Saturday after the Tuesday. Arizona, Fox News called Arizona, but AP and the rest of them, Arizona was still vote counting into early the next week. Georgia took several days to vote. Donald Trump’s position is stop the count on election night. And there are very few states who are gonna be able to do that, but that’s what Donald Trump wants. And I worry that it is not just going to be to undermine the results in California, but as you say in other states.
Jane Coaston: Marc, as always, thank you so much for joining me.
Marc Elias: Thank you for having me, and I hope I’ll be I hope I’ll be invited back.
Jane Coaston: You will be. Don’t worry.
Marc Elias: All right. Good.
Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Marc Elias, founder of Democracy Docket. Before we go, guys, Crooked Con 2026 is happening. November 5th through 7th in Washington, D.C., it’s going to be even bigger than last year. And I’ll be there! There will be exciting panels across bigger stages, candidate forums, live shows, interviews, organizing events, and tense but cathartic moments between prominent media figures who have yelled at each other on the internet. Friends of the Pod subscribers get an exclusive discount for the all-day event on November 7th, in addition to many other perks we can’t wait to tell you about. Go to crookedcon.com to get your tickets. We can’t wait to see you there. That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review. Cheers to the Scottish soccer fans drinking Boston dry and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just about how the Tartan Army is drinking so much beer at Boston establishments, that last weekend the Sam Adams tap room, for example, ran out of Sam Adams, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston, and do you know how much beer you need to drink to triple St. Patrick’s Day beer sales in Boston? I guess Scotland does. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. Our show is produced by Caitlin Plummer, Emily Fohr, Erica Morrison, and Adriene Hill. Our team includes Hayley Jones, Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Joseph Dutra, Johanna Case, and Desmond Taylor. Our music is by Kyle Murdock and Jordan Cantor. We had help today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]
