The quack cabinet is coming for your vote.
Another election story you may have missed this week: Trump's boyhood pal wants him to declare a "national emergency" to hijack the midterm vote.
Buried under the Iran strikes and the wreckage of the NATO summit, a story slipped past most Americans this week that deserves more attention. One of Trump’s closest friends is reportedly urging him to "declare a national emergency” ahead of the elections in November.
The friend in question is Peter Ticktin, an 80-year-old Florida lawyer who describes himself as Donald Trump’s best friend from their boarding school days at the New York Military Academy. According to CNN, Ticktin is pressing the president to place this fall’s midterms under federal control, and he helped draft a 17-page executive order that would justify the emergency on the grounds of foreign interference in electronic voting machines.
That “interference” was found not to be credible by a joint Justice Department and Homeland Security review that concluded years ago. Indeed, U.S. intelligence found that no foreign government altered a single vote. But no matter. Under the draft order, reviewed in full by PBS News earlier this year, the president would further restrict mail-in voting, mandate hand counts of ballots, force every registered voter in America to re-register in person, and effectively prohibit the machines that states use to run their own elections.
Ticktin insists the proof of the grand conspiracy is coming any day now, once Nicolás Maduro starts talking from federal custody. And some have speculated that the Trump administration is trying to induce the Venezuelan leader to go along with such an admission in exchange for leniency. Trump’s pal also claims Democrats are plotting to steal enough seats in November to impeach both Trump and Vance and install Hakeem Jeffries in the Oval Office.
I know what you’re thinking, because I thought it too. This man sounds like a quack. Well, yes. He sure seems to be a quack. And that’s actually why I’m taking him seriously.
In my two-and-a-half years inside the first Trump administration, I saw how ideas like this one traveled. In a normal administration, layers of lawyers and advisors weed out whacky notions before they get to the president. In Trump world, it happens the other way around. He “mainlines” recommendations from quacks — who go straight to him with their off-the-wall, unconstitutional, and impossible ideas — then dumps them onto his advisors. Back then, a great deal of your government’s time was spent chasing those absurdities away, before they became reality. Now, his team chases them into reality.
I call it the Quack Cabinet. Donald Trump has always kept an informal shadow council of true believers, conspiracy peddlers, and grievance merchants who get his ear because they know how to work the man. Flattery. Sensationalism. And more flattery. Lou Dobbs was like this. The conservative commentator and Fox News anchor would fawn over Trump on his show and, simultaneously, churn out conspiracy theories knowing the president was watching and would gulp it all up. It got so bad that we dubbed Lou the White House “deputy chief of staff.” Trump would see a kooky thing Lou said on television, call one of us up in the middle of the night, and demand that it be investigated or pursued.
The Quack Cabinet is not terribly interested in the truth. These ill-informed people are interested in the spectacle and the power. For that reason, they don’t tell Trump what he needs to hear; they tell him what he wants to hear. That keeps them in the inner circle. And it also creates an echo chamber of country-wrecking ideas. Arrest the RINOs! Ignore the judges! Seize Greenland! Build the ballroom! Deport the Democrats! These “cabinet” members hold no offices and pass no background checks, but they have a better legislative record than most U.S. senators, because their ideas keep becoming policy.
If you doubt the danger here, consider three facts. Ticktin was in the Oval Office last week, seated beside Tina Peters, the former Colorado county clerk who was convicted of breaching her own voting systems and who walked free after Trump pressured Colorado’s governor into a commutation. Sources told ABC News, months ago, that Trump had personally reviewed versions of the draft order and discussed it with those involved. And the president has already signed an executive order attacking mail-in voting and voter registration, which felt like it was plucked straight from these conversations.
So when the White House waves this all away by saying that Ticktin “overstates” his influence, just remember, that’s what they always do. Trump officials said the same thing about every crank whose proposal later appeared overthe president’s signature. Having sat in those rooms, I can tell you the distance between “the president has never heard of it” and “the president signed it this morning” is way, way shorter than most Americans can imagine.
Now, set this story next to the one I wrote about yesterday (and joined Jen Psaki last night to discuss, below). The administration is threatening to withhold national security grant funding from states that refuse to cooperate with the president’s election schemes. I oversaw those funds at DHS. They exist to protect Americans of every political stripe from terrorist attacks, mass shootings, cyberattacks, and weaponized drones. As I put it to Jen, imagine dialing 911 and being asked how you voted before anyone agrees to help you. That’s the moral logic of what the administration is doing.
The deeper danger is what the extortion is designed to produce. The White House wants states to surrender their voter rolls so the administration can announce it has found fraud, manufacture a pretext, and dispatch federal law enforcement to seize ballots. We’ve already seen the dress rehearsal in Fulton County, GA. None of this requires a conspiracy theory to explain. It’s all happening… right now… in plain sight.
All of this to say, keep your eyes on the Quack Cabinet. If this guy, Ticktin, wants Trump to declare a “national emergency,” let’s be prepared for the president to declare one — and be ready ourselves to say within seconds that it’s a farce. Indeed, there’s no such thing as a “national emergency” that lets a president take over elections. It’s a fiction! But we must mock the concept now, not after Trump gussies it up at the presidential podium to make it feel official and, therefore, legal (when it’s not).
In the meantime, we really have to keep the pressure on. There’s a reason DEFIANCE has made this year’s elections our top priority, and why we are doing everything we can to get out the vote, secure the election, and maintain the integrity of the results.
We’re producing a documentary ahead of the midterms about Trump and the MAGA movement’s sweeping campaign of corruption, so that voters walk into November with their eyes open.
We’re getting more people to quit MAGA and stand with democracy.
We’re standing with Latino voters and making sure their voices can’t be silenced.
We’re putting the Epstein files on the road, coast to coast, to remind Americans why justice has been corrupted, what it will take to hold the coverup’s participants accountable, and how we get justice for survivors.
We’re making sure local prosecutors are empowered to arrest federal agents if they break the law and engage in voter intimidation at the polls.
We’re working with fellow pro-democracy organizations to help states resist Trump’s abuse of emergency powers, because the Ticktin playbook is exactly the scenario we have been war-gaming.
We’re backing key lawsuits to stop Trump’s mail-in ballot executive order, which would amount to a breathtaking hijacking of our elections.
And a lot more.
The people who told Trump he could overturn the 2020 election with fake electors were quacks. Now he’s got a full-on Quack Cabinet that no one in the White House seems to be trying to keep at bay. They’re welcomed into Oval Office meetings and presidential events.
And with these voices in Trump’s ear, it’s our expectation that the president will undertake more illegal and unconstitutional actions to steal the midterms. He will dispute the outcome if his side loses, even if the loss is decisive and beyond dispute. And he will — in all likelihood — try to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to the political opposition. After all, he’s done it before. But this time we’re better prepared to fight it. And we need to stand together.
Your friend, in defiance,
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