Trump Pushes Election Nationalization Amid Georgia Ballot Seizure (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: President Trump is now openly calling for the federal government to take over elections in more than a dozen states. It is prefaced on this, his lie that he won the 2020 election. Listen to what he told podcaster Dan Bongino, who was his deputy FBI director until just a month ago.

[00:00:18] Speaker 2: The Republicans should say, we want to take over, we should take over the voting, the voting in at least many 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.

[00:00:32] Speaker 1: The constitution explicitly grants the states, not the federal government, not Republicans, the right to run their polls. This comes after the FBI searched an election office in Fulton County, Georgia last week and seized the 2020 ballots. Sources now tell CNN that the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who was on site during the operation, put the president on the phone with some of the FBI agents who carried out that search. Gabbard now says the president asked her to be there and that during the call, he did not ask any questions of the agents or give any orders. CNN's Elena Treen is live at the White House. Kate just spoke with one of the Fulton County commissioners there who says every single election has been fair and free. But now you have this situation with the FBI picking up those votes and you have the president of the United States making a really disturbing claim. What are you learning about this?

[00:01:30] Speaker 3: Yeah, look, in some of the conversations I've been having, Sarah, of course, you know, what the president is saying, particularly about this idea of nationalizing elections is just almost certainly not going to happen. They would have to, it would require changing the Constitution. And many Republican lawmakers, of course, see the way that this, the election process works in the United States and having the states be the ones who really get to decide a lot of the key parts of that is not going to change. But what this does really, this rhetoric is continue a trend and a pattern that we've seen the president continue into his second term in office, which is to continue and, you know, cast doubt on the integrity of the election process in the United States. And of course, Trump himself, and I know he continues to believe this, he still rages about this behind the scenes, this idea that, you know, elections in the United States can be rife with fraud. He still often talks about the 2020 election and falsely claims that he had won it. But then also this idea that perhaps there's some broader conspiracy that Democrats are engaging in to try and prop up undocumented immigrants, for example, in certain states, and that could also be affecting the election process. Again, all of that without evidence. But I think what we're seeing, what we saw happen last week in Fulton County, Georgia, is one part of this. But we've also seen the president take other steps. One is that the Justice Department is now demanding that several states, including Minnesota, turn over their voter rolls, their full voter rolls, as the Trump administration is really trying to build a national voter file. We also know the president last year had, you know, pushed forward with these executive orders. He signed an executive order in March to make significant changes to the electoral process in the United States, including requiring documentary proof of citizenship and demanding that all mail ballots be received by the times that poll close on Election Day. I will say that effort has largely been rebuffed by the courts. But again, this speaks to the broader pattern that the president has been doing, really having his administration in his second term try to put more influence on these election processes. Again, I will say this is something that Republicans, at least a lot of the lawmakers I've talked to on Capitol Hill in recent days or in recent hours, have been saying more of a rhetoric thing. They wish the president wasn't talking about this. They want to be focusing on other issues ahead of the midterms, but still something, of course, we're likely to see continue by this president moving forward.

[00:03:57] Speaker 1: Yeah, and this isn't happening in a vacuum because in the special elections, the Republicans have gotten trounced a few times. And so there is that, as well as the 2026 midterms are fast approaching. Elena Treen, thank you so much for your reporting there from the White House.

[00:04:11] Speaker 4: President Trump is taking his false claims about the 2020 election result and kicking it up a notch, it seems now. Now ahead of the midterms, he's calling on Republicans to nationalize voting, to take over the voting in more than a dozen states, he says, essentially saying that he wants to throw out the Constitution and the powers explicitly given to states by the Constitution when it comes to our elections. Add to that now what happened last week. The FBI searching an election office in Fulton County, Georgia. You're seeing video of it here, seizing 2020 ballots. Joining me right now is Rob Pitts. He's the chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. It's a position he also held during the 2020 election. Thank you so much for coming in. The president now saying that he's, you're going to see something, you're going to see something in Georgia. You're going to see some interesting things come out in Georgia. What's your reaction to that?

[00:05:07] Speaker 5: Well, that's what I was afraid of last week when I heard that Tulsi Gabbard had come to Fulton County, Georgia for an FBI raid. It made no sense to me given how full her plate is. So at that moment, I didn't see her personally, but I heard that she was on the scene. I knew at that moment that something bigger than just the FBI confiscating boxes of 2020 election material was going on. And when I thought at that time that this must be about the 2020 elections, but more importantly about the 2026 and 2028 elections, we felt all along here that there was going to be a move to take over elections in Fulton County, Georgia. And I think that that's what's at play now.

[00:05:55] Speaker 4: You wrote about this kind of laying out what happened last week and with a clear message. You wrote, I said it in 2020 and I'm saying it again now, stay the hell out of Fulton County. That is your message. What though, would a state take over now of Fulton County elections? What would it mean?

[00:06:18] Speaker 5: Well, I think it was so, so much the sentence here in Fulton County, it would discourage people from voting. It would, I think they would control how we run elections. It would probably reduce the number of early voting precincts that we have and the things that we do here to encourage voting. But listen, I'm no constitutional scholar, but I do know that the states control elections, not Congress, not the White House and clearly not the president. So he's treating the constitution as if it's a suggestion and it's not. It's the law. And further, I will say that this whole issue with the raid was more about a distraction to what's really going on. Something sinister is going on. And I think this is really more about power on his part than it is about policy. It's power and not policy. But what I would say to him and others here, even I was at our Capitol yesterday trying to just making sure that there was nothing going on at our state legislature on the Republican side that I was not aware of, because that's where it's going to start here. So I would say to other states and counties who find themselves in a situation like ours to be vigilant, because this is real. I was told that I was a target, still am a target of this investigation. I've done nothing wrong. Fulton County has done nothing wrong. Our elections were open. They were fair. They were transparent then. And I said what you quoted, I'll say it again. We in Fulton County, we run fair elections. Every legal vote is counted. And I said then, leave us alone. We know what we're doing.

[00:08:01] Speaker 4: Right. And you also wrote, and something I took particular note of is you also wrote this. Since 2020, they, Fulton County, have run 17 separate elections without complaints. Of particular note, they conducted a near perfect presidential election in 2024. When Donald Trump won the state of Georgia that year, none of the conspiracy theorists and troublemakers had anything negative to say, which is an important thing to point out. What you're getting at is you think that the real motivation here is political, but you also say that you think something sinister is going on. What do you think? Tell me more of what you think that is.

[00:08:39] Speaker 5: That's the taking over of the elections in Fulton County, Georgia. Recall, go back to 2020, President Biden carried Georgia. Remember the telephone call with the president and our secretary of state? I need 11,000, I think 780, finally 11,780 votes. That's my concern now. When they took those ballots last week, those 700 boxes of ballots, when they left our elections, our elections hub, I have no idea where those ballots are. I don't know who has those ballots. I don't know what they're doing with them. I can use my imagination and just guess what they're doing with them, but we do not know. As long as those ballots and other items pertaining to the 2020 elections were in our control, I could assure the world, but more importantly, the people of Fulton County, that those ballots were safe and secure. Where they are now, I can no longer guarantee that. Who knows what they're doing? We can only use our imaginations. I've not heard from the FBI. I've not heard from Mr. Gabbard. I've not heard from anyone, so I have no idea about what's going on, but I can tell you this, we're vigilant and we're going to fight this with everything that we have because we have nothing, absolutely nothing to hide. Our elections, once again, they were open, they were fair, and they were transparent, and every legal vote was counted, and I've been involved in many, many elections throughout my political career, and I can tell you one thing. There's no such thing as a perfect election. There's always a possibility of mechanical failure. There's always a possibility of human error, but in our case, those 17 elections since 2020 all run successfully. In the 2020 elections, they've been audited. They've been reviewed, and they've been looked at A to Z. We come up clean in every instance, even a hand count, so why the fixation on 2020? Again, I think it's just a distraction.

[00:10:42] Speaker 4: Rob Pitts of Fulton County, thank you very much for coming in, sir.