“Cheat Like Hell”: Can Trump Actually Rig the 2026 Midterms?

Por Mother Jones — Mother Jones Magazine

He tried really, really hard in 2020. With his souring presidency on the line, he’s intensifying his efforts again. You know what we’re talking about: Trump’s election meddling.

“After 2020, I think one of the lessons that some of us learned—but unfortunately not everybody—is that our democracy is fragile,” says Washington, DC, bureau chief David Corn in the very first episode of our new podcast, Stress Test, a white-knuckle guide to the midterm elections. “Trump came pretty close, even with all the guardrails.”

And Trump isn’t the only one meddling—to which David can personally attest. Shortly after the release of his new book, How Russia Won, the very Russian disinformation operators he wrote about started circling deepfake videos of him, claiming he’d written a very different book: one detailing 300 crimes committed by Democratic candidates.

In this episode, David and co-host Garrison Hayes are joined by voting rights correspondent Ari Berman to pull apart the biggest stress test facing the midterms: whether the vote will proceed smoothly, or whether Trump will meddle even more. After all, Trump and his gang are already claiming the election will be “rigged,” pushing false voter-fraud claims, trying to disrupt mail voting, and demanding voter-roll data that could be used to challenge or purge voters. Then there are the redistricting wars that have shaped so much of 2026, and the Supreme Court’s role in diluting Black political power. At last month’s Republican midterm convention, Trump even went so far as to lead the crowd in a performatively jokey pledge to “cheat like hell.” (“It’s kind of hard to believe when someone says it so explicitly,” says a dumbfounded Garrison.)

The episode presents a blend of hope and fear. Many of Trump’s efforts have flopped so far: The Justice Department, Ari notes, is 0-25 in federal court in its bid to force states to hand over their voter rolls. His advice: “Don’t give Trump any more power than he actually has.”

But the Supreme Court has left plenty of room for a more orderly kind of rigging, like gerrymandering. “So you can’t steal,” as David puts it, “but you can tilt.” And Ari argues that what happens before the vote may not be what matters most. “What we saw in 2020 is all hell broke loose after voting ended. And so that’s why I don’t want to sit here and say, like, ‘Everyone’s fine, no need to stress, we’re all good.’ Because we don’t know what’s going to happen in those next phases where people vote, where votes are counted, and where elections are certified.”

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Fonte: Mother Jones Magazine