How the GOP Is Working to Steal the Midterms (w/ Joel McCleary and Mark Medish) | TCHR

Midterm elections in the United States are scheduled for November 3. Concerns that the elections might be canceled, coerced or subverted at any stage of the process are becoming increasingly valid as the Trump administration takes steps to possibly disenfranchise voters or otherwise control the outcome to prevent a Democratic Party majority in Congress. Chris Hedges invited two political analysts with deep histories in Washington, Joel McCleary and Mark Medish, to this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to speak about a series of articles they published in The Spectator, titled “Dancing in the Dark,” in which they describe the wide range of tools available to the current administration to maintain power. Medish warns, “What we see is that he’s put in place a whole array of worrying mechanisms to interfere with the process and, at a minimum, to claim afterwards that the election was flawed, so the results are not valid.” McCleary and Medish describe the Trump administration strategy as one of keeping all options open. These include preventing people from voting, intimidating voters, and even targeted challenges aimed at particular races to prevent certain members of Congress from being seated. They caution that the administration learned many lessons from their mistakes in the 2020 election, and are better prepared this time to control the narrative and to act quickly to intervene in races. As McCleary explains, “This time I think they’re preparing the public for the case that they will have to make, and the election deniers, who are now in key positions, will be part of that communication strategy.” Another concern is the amount of executive power that Donald Trump possesses. There are old tools such as The Insurrection Act or Article II of the US Constitution that could be invoked and other new ones such as the National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, which targets anyone deemed to be anti-Christian, anti-capitalist or anti-fascist. Their warnings are a call to action, as Hedges concludes, “We’re saying that it is this serious. And I think if Trump manages to essentially shut down these elections, there’s no exit.”