Obama staffers sound the alarm on Trump’s attacks on election integrity

Former President Barack Obama’s aides are sounding the alarm on President Donald Trump’s latest attacks on elections in the United States.

Trump has amped up his criticism on mail-in voting in recent days, telling Fox News’ Bret Baier that Russian President Vladimir Putin told him that the U.S. could not have a fair election with mail-in ballots. Trump then said on Monday that he would lead an effort to eliminate mail-in voting in the U.S. despite states being in charge of their own elections.

Trump also floated cancelling U.S. elections if the country was engaged in a war during the next presidential election.

After Trump’s comments, the co-hosts of the “Pod Save America” podcast warned in an episode on Tuesday that Americans should be concerned about the president’s recent rhetoric.

“The constitution is explicit. It’s not just clear. It is explicit. It says that legislators are in charge of running federal elections. And actually what Trump is saying here is in conflict with another crackpot right-wing legal theory, which is the independent legislature theory, which it says not only are legislators responsible for the administration of federal elections, they can’t be questioned by or their laws can’t be adjudicated by the courts,” co-host Jon Lovett said on “Pod Save America.”

He explained that “our level of concern should be very high.”

“Whatever he does here, he is going to try wherever he can…to figure out the weaknesses that he can exploit before the midterms in 2026 and the general in 2028,” Lovett added. “That is up to and including him finding some pretense to not leave office in 2028.”

“He is doing a lot of redecorating for a guy who is only supposed to be there for a short-term lease. And so all of this to me is sort of these are red sirens—the scariest color for sirens—going off,” he said.

Co-host Tommy Vietor explained that he is concerned Trump will make it harder for Democrats to vote.

“I’m more broadly worried, like you are, about Trump trying every way possible to take control over the voting process or just find ways to make it harder for Democrats to vote especially in cities. Like that’s the endgame I think,” Vietor said.

Trump announced early Monday that he would lead a “movement” to remove mail-in ballots and what he called “highly ‘inaccurate” and “Seriously Controversial” voting machines through an executive order ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. However, he did not provide any details into how he would execute it given that states are in charge of federal elections.

The announcement was met with widespread criticism, with many pundits noting that Trump said Putin told him that the U.S. election was “rigged” due to mail-in voting.

“It’s impossible to have mail in voting and have honest elections,” Trump said that Putin told him. “And he said that to me because we talked about 2020. He said, ‘You won that election by so much.’”