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This is Democracy Watch. Mark, we have major, major news here. And that, that is that Donald Trump has threatened to get rid of mail-in ballots. I'm going to put his post on the screen right here. "I'm going to lead a movement to get rid of mail-in ballots. And also, while we're at it, highly inaccurate, very expensive, and seriously controversial voting machines, which costs 10 times more than accurate and sophisticated watermark paper, which is faster, leaves no doubt at the end of the evening as to who won and who lost the election."
So, I want to talk about, first and foremost, what power Donald Trump has to issue an executive order that could actually, uh, make this, you know, rambling screed into a reality. None. Donald Trump has no power to do this. That is why we need to be so worried, because Donald Trump believes, and as that goes on to say further down, that the states are agents of the federal government and that he speaks for the federal government. Okay. But Donald Trump has no power over state elections. States have power over state elections. Congress can enact legislation that, that can, uh, oversee, uh, federal elections conducted by states. But the president of the United States, acting alone through executive, uh, orders, has literally the same power that you have to dictate how states run elections.
But this needs to be a major wakeup call to everyone, because that isn't how he, what he believes. It isn't how he's acting. And I fear, I fear that he is going to get more and more desperate and escalate the tools that are available to him to undermine free and fair elections in 2026. Is this the kind of situation where he can issue this executive order and it's in place only until somebody sues to stop it? Like, until we get an injunction, this is somehow law because he's issued his edict? Or, or is there, is it just, you know, he, he issues an executive order that has no power behind it and it just doesn't come into effect because it's not a real thing?
Look, let me be clear. It is important that when Donald Trump issues an executive order like this, that he gets sued, he gets sued fast, and that we get an unambiguous, clear statement from the courts that what he is trying to do is illegal and unconstitutional. And I can promise you that I will be among the lawyers to bring that litigation fast and to have that result. When he, when he did his nonsensical executive order in March, uh, I was proud that my team represented the Democratic Party in, in blocking it. And, uh, and you know, we cannot allow him to gain even a modicum of momentum. We cannot say, "Well, don't worry. You know, the states won't pay attention. The states won't abide. You know, people will know that this is a joke." No. When Donald Trump violates the Constitution as blatantly as he is threatening to do here, we need to bring all of the weapons available to us to the, to the legal table, and we need to bring litigation, and we need to insist that the courts speak unequivocally that what he is doing is wrong and in violation of the law.
You know, we've seen Trump issue these edicts before, and we see the speed with which his, his minions in, in the states will follow. He told Texas that they need five seats. Greg Abbott snapped two, delivered him a special legislative session, and drew up a map that would add five seats. And so, how do you think that this could manifest as far as the states are concerned? Yes, the federal government doesn't have power to usurp control of the elections, but, but what about, what about, you know, the Ronda Santises and Greg Abbotts of the world who are listening to what he's saying and taking it as gospel?
Yeah. So, look, you, you raise a very, very important point, which is we immediately go to the question of what is it going to look like for Donald Trump to have to force states to do these things? But note in his first sentence, what he says is, "I'm going to lead a movement." And what he may very well have in mind is what you're suggesting, which is he's going to tell Republican state governors and Republican state legislators to simply abolish mail-in voting. That they are to simply do away with voting machines and adopt what he refers to as sophisticated watermark paper, whatever that is. Yeah. Right. And, and, and what that will mean in those states will be an absolute collapse of free and fair elections in democracy.
You know, when you have a state that has adopted widespread use of vote by mail, when you have states that have invested tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in voting equipment, and you simply decide that you're going to do away with that with mail-in voting, you do away with voting equipment, um, that you don't have replacements for, what it means is people won't be able to vote. You know, you're not going to, you're not going to take a state that has, you know, 30, 40, 50% of its population voting by mail, do away with it, and then automatically those people are just going to be accommodated with in-person voting. First of all, there won't be the equipment for it. Second, there won't be the locations for it. Third, there won't be the people to administer that. Like, none of the processes and procedures that would be necessary to transition away from this would be, would be in place.
The reason why most states adopted vote by mail, adopted, uh, things like, uh, vote centers, adopted things like early voting, all things which Republicans rail against, the reasons why they adopted those were as much budgetary as anything else. Right? The states don't have the, the physical locations, the physical machines, the, the, the personnel, uh, to administer election day voting across the entire state. So what you will see is mass disenfranchisement. And we know this, Brian, that whenever there is mass disenfranchisement, the people who are going to suffer are they're going to be overwhelmingly black, they're going to be overwhelmingly young, they're going to be overwhelmingly transient, they're going to be overwhelmingly Democrats, and that is what Donald Trump is counting on.
Well, Mark, in terms of the people who would be able to cast ballots, when you, when you lose some of the systems that are in place with, with obviously all of the protections that come with it, how would Trump and Republicans be able to cheat in the event that there are no voting machines and we're relying only on, on humans, uh, to count these votes? Uh, you know, we had mentioned this idea of watermark paper. I'm not exactly sure what watermark paper is, but to what extent would they be able to kind of, to kind of use these, these new procedures and, and, and kind of rig the rules of those in their favor?
Look, I think that Donald Trump is setting up something that will not be very clever. And that's the absolute travesty of where we are as a country right now. When Donald Trump sent the National Guard into Los Angeles, it was not clever. It was not subtle. When he sent in the Marines, it was even less subtle, right? There wasn't anything hidden there. What he did is he desensitized people to the assault on democracy. And so, what I'm worried about here is not that he's going to move to all mail paper ballots and they're going to have some sophisticated fraud scheme or or whatever to, to, to, um, uh, to rig the elections. I think that what we're going to see happen is going to be in plain view for everyone. Like, it's not going to be hidden. It's going to be, it's going to be out in the open.
And the, and again, the key sentence to what he wrote here is that, um, that states, and this is a direct quote from what he, what he, what he posted, uh, "States are merely an agent for the federal government in counting and tabulating votes. They must do what the federal government, as represented by the president, tells them for the good of our country to do." Now, I want you to pay attention to that, Brian, because if you notice there, he didn't say that the states are merely an agent of the federal government for conducting elections, for, for vote methods, which, by the way, vote by mail is. Rather, he said that they're merely an agent in counting and tabulating the votes. Well, what he's saying is that they are to tabulate and count votes. They are to report election results in accordance with what their master, right? Because an agent is an agent for a master. Yeah. Wants, wants them to do. And Donald Trump is that master in this telling.
And so, what he is going to expect the states to do is to report the election results as he wishes them to be. He doesn't care how. He doesn't care why. He didn't care what he wanted Bradenberger to find 11,000 votes where he found them. He didn't care if he made them up. He didn't care if he found them in this county or that county. He didn't care if he found them in vote by mail or he found them in, in person voting. He didn't even care if they were added or subtracted. He just wanted the results. And so, Donald Trump is telling us that he is not hiding the ball. He's not like pretending to be doing something else. That is what he is saying.
And it is about damn time that the institutions of this country, the legacy media, first and foremost among them, wakes the up and starts to report and say what Donald Trump himself is saying. I mean, the goddamn Washington Post, I'm sorry for swearing, I'm sorry for for taking the Lord's name in vain, but, but by, but their headline after Donald Trump's executive order is, and I quote, "Trump previews executive order on voting." I'm sorry, what? You think what Brian and I are talking about here is Trump previewing an executive order on voting? It's as if, like, you know, they are reporting on, you know, Barack Obama or Joe Biden, you know, announcing, you know, Bald Eagle Month, right? I mean, like, like this is not an executive order on voting, and he's not previewing it. He is saying he is going to lead a movement among Republican states to do away with, with a method of voting that people rely on. He's going to issue an executive order that he does not have the power to do. He's going to expect states to act as his agent in the counting and tabulation of voting. And this is what the legacy media, what the Washington Post, what Jeff Bezos's house organ for Donald Trump, reports as previewing executive order on voting.
I mean, Brian, our democracy is not going to survive if we do not have more responsibility by the institutions of civil society, the nonprofit world, the, the legacy media, uh, the law firms than we are currently seeing. We're going to need a modicum of courage. That's why I started Democracy Docket in 2020. It's why you and I have been doing these videos now for years. And I wish I could say it is getting better. I wish I could say the legacy media is getting more responsible. But then you read something like that from the Washington Post and you're left just shaking your head and saying, "No wonder why Donald Trump is deploying the National Guard and no one seems to care. No wonder why you are seeing people disappeared off the streets of major cities and nobody seems to care." It is because we have an absolute collapse and failure by the institutions that have promised us that democracy would not die in darkness. That in fact, they stand for the fact, the proposition that democracy will die in plain sight of daylight. Yeah.
All of which, by the way, underscores for those who are watching right now the need, uh, that if you are not yet subscribed to Mark's YouTube channel, please subscribe so you can elevate his voice. Whereas the legacy media is perfectly content to drop the ball right now. Here are the kind of voices that we need to elevate. So, I'm going to put the link, uh, uh, in the post description on the screen of the video. Mark, there was a moment in the Oval Office today where Donald Trump spoke, was speaking with some European leaders, and again went off railing about mail-in voting. And this comes in the immediate aftermath of Vladimir Putin talking about mail-in voting just a few days ago. And this seems to have planted some seed in Trump's mind that while he was getting utterly humiliated by Putin, uh, during his, his, uh, his summit, um, where Putin stayed for only a couple of hours and then unceremoniously left after having the red carpet, literal red carpet rolled out for him, one of the things that Putin said was that there shouldn't be mail-in voting. And of course, Trump, not recognizing that he's just been humiliated and used by the, by the Russian president, decided that his takeaway here would be to echo that claim. And so, what do you make of the fact that, uh, that Trump is taking his cues from an autocrat in Russia where there are no free and fair elections, and the dictator there just so happens to win by 98% in all of his elections?
That's right. And by the way, Vladimir Putin, who interfered in the 2016 election, right, uh, that Donald Trump won, and Donald Trump's been lying about that. Uh, Vladimir Putin, who, by the way, signed a law, such as they have them in Russia, in 2020 to actually establish mail-in voting and allow it in Russia, is now allegedly giving advice to Donald Trump to ban mail-in voting in the United States. And Donald Trump, being the useful idiot that he is, is sitting there paring it, as you point out, as he is being humiliated by Vladimir Putin inviting him to a summit in the United States, something that Vladimir Putin did not earn, so that Vladimir Putin could come and offer nothing, nothing in return, and leaves before lunch, and leaves Donald Trump standing there like a, like the, that he is. And what Donald Trump walks away with is, is, "Oh, look, I got good election advice from, from Vladimir Putin, so let me go with that." Right? Because Vladimir Putin, known the world over as the champion of free and fair elections, right? And that, and that's what he is. And then to sit in the, in the White House Oval Office with Vlad, with, you know, Zelensky there and, and European leaders in the wings, and to parrot Vladimir Putin's election advice. What an absolute disgrace this guy is. What an absolute fraud this guy is.
But look, it's up to us. It's up to us. It's up to the people watching this video whether we're going to sit by and let this happen to our country, or whether we are going to insist that we are going to have free and fair elections in 2026. We're going to insist we're going to have free and fair elections in 2028. We are going to support those who are fighting hard for democracy in court. We're going to fight hard. We're going to fight hard to support those who are fighting for democracy on the ballot, the candidates who are standing up against these Republicans, the, the people who are the governors who are fighting against the, the redistricting, uh, nonsense and, and, and, uh, efforts to undermine that going on in Texas. Like, we have the, we have a choice here, everyone. So, you know, I want you to obviously do everything peacefully, but you need to protest. You need to stay informed. You need to stay engaged. You need to go and write your legislators. You need to attend hearings where they're talking about these things in your nation, in your state's capital, in your county board of elections. Like, it is our democracy, and no one else is going to stand up for this, uh, except us. So that's what we got to do.
Well, look, I, I think it's also worth noting that to your point of democracy doesn't just happen, like you have to continuously work to make sure that we uphold it, otherwise it will succumb to the people trying to tear it down. And there are very clearly people who are trying to tear it down. To that point, you, first and foremost, are in the courts fighting for this thing on, on a daily basis. And so these are the kind of voices for everybody watching right now that we need to continue elevating. These are the fighters that we have to grow, uh, whose platforms we need to grow so we all can take a small step here. Subscribe to Mark's YouTube channel, elevate his voice, make sure to, to give an incentive structure for other people on the left to do what Mark is doing and what he's getting so, uh, popular in doing, which is to speak out, use his platform, and actually fight back. So, I'm going to put the link to Democracy Docket right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video. Uh, if you are not yet subscribed, please make sure to subscribe, uh, to both of our channels. Both of them are right here on the screen. Doesn't cost you anything to subscribe, but it's a great way to support our work. I'm Brian Teller Cohen. I'm Mark Elias. This is Democracy Watch. [Music]