Washington: Donald Trump delivered a cryptic response when asked whether he would consider calling a national security emergency ahead of the midterm elections, giving oxygen to calls from right-wing pundits for an unprecedented intervention.
The US president was asked on Real America’s Voice – a conservative media network that includes former Trump strategist Steve Bannon – about the prospects of him declaring such an emergency within the next month.
“Let me just say this, stranger things have happened. I’ll leave it at that,” Trump replied. The host, Wayne Allyn Root, one of the prominent advocates for the idea, agreed to leave the subject there.
The comments mark the first time Trump has engaged with the specific proposal for a national security emergency ahead of the November midterms – an idea pushed by Bannon, Root and other influential pundits in recent months.
It comes amid the US Senate’s refusal to pass the SAVE Act, a bill that would compel prospective voters to show documentary proof of American citizenship in person when registering to vote and present photo ID at the polling booth. Currently, voter ID requirements differ from state to state.
Root said the emergency declaration would deliver those two changes, plus restrictions on mail-in ballots, which Trump has also advocated. Later, when he described it as “the SAVE Act on steroids”, Trump said: “Yep.”
Chuck Schumer, the Democrats’ Senate leader, noted the remarks. “Donald Trump wants to take over American elections,” he said. “Senate Democrats are prepared to combat his unprecedented, illegal efforts at every turn.”
Last month, in a much-hyped prime-time address to the nation, Trump unveiled what he said was evidence of widespread election meddling and influence by China, including the alleged harvesting of 220 million Americans’ data.
“Members of the deep state” within the US intelligence system actively worked to suppress and downplay the seriousness of this activity, Trump claimed on national television.
The allegations attracted scepticism throughout the American media and were generally seen as lacking evidence or rehashing known vulnerabilities in the electoral system.
But they were immediately used by Trump’s conservative media backers as justification for the president to intervene in the democratic process.
Bannon told this masthead that same evening: “The damning evidence unearthed from the ‘deep state’ intelligence agencies sets the predicate for President Trump to declare a national security emergency regarding this November’s elections.”
Later, he said Trump’s televised address was the beginning of the process, and more evidence of election fraud would be presented. “I believe we will have a national emergency declared by late August.”
Over the past week, the White House has attempted to focus attention on declassified documents showing the FBI opened a criminal probe into Trump in May 2017 to examine whether he acted – wittingly or unwittingly – as a Russian asset when he fired then FBI director James Comey.
It is part of a broader investigation by the White House into election integrity and the alleged weaponisation of the federal government against Trump by the so-called “deep state”.
That probe is being run by John Solomon, founder of right-wing news site Just The News, who has been brought into the White House temporarily as a special government employee.
On Tuesday morning (US time), the president’s loyal trade counsellor, Peter Navarro, spoke to reporters at the White House at length about the allegations, and called for Republicans in US Congress to immediately issue subpoenas.
“These people need to be held to account,” he said. “This was nothing more than an attempted coup d’tat.”
Navarro – who went to jail in 2024 for refusing to co-operate with a congressional probe into the January 6, 2021 riots at the US Capitol – declined to talk about his discussions with Trump on the matter, citing executive privilege.
“If you look at the president’s statements, he wants, as Steve Bannon said, action, action, action,” Navarro said. “There’s nothing more important than election integrity.”
Trump has now successfully installed his former lawyer, Todd Blanche, as attorney-general, while the president’s loyal ally, Bill Pulte, is serving as the acting director of national intelligence. Both are powerful positions overseeing the justice and intelligence systems.
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.