The Trump administration must “get these elections squared away, for once and all,” Bannon said, adding, “No mail-in ballots.”
A day earlier, Trump posted on Truth Social that he would “lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES.” (Trump’s claim that voting machines are unreliable is false.)
Bannon then escalated his rhetoric, demanding that ICE agents enforce voter ID measures in cities throughout the country, seemingly without regard to local and state laws.
“They’re petrified over at MSNBC and CNN that, hey, since we’re taking control of the cities, there’s going to be ICE officers near polling places,” Bannon said. “You damn right.”
“If you don’t have an ID — if you’re not a citizen — you’re not voting,” he said.
Bannon’s threat is not idle, given the Trump administration’s posture toward some of the country’s biggest cities. In June, Trump deployed ICE agents to Los Angeles to carry out workplace raids, subsequently calling in the National Guard for additional repressive power. Then in August, Trump took over Washington’s local police department and surged federal police on the city’s streets. Once again, Trump sent in the National Guard; Republican governors lined up to provide their state’s troops to serve his ends. Trump has also threatened to deploy National Guard troops to New York City, Chicago, Baltimore, and Oakland, and has directed ICE to ramp up deportations in cities run by Democrats.
Some of Bannon’s allies have attempted to suppress voter turnout by monitoring ballot drop boxes and otherwise harassing election workers. Now, as the Trump administration prepares to hire an additional 10,000 ICE agents thanks to a newly passed Republican budget, Bannon’s demand that immigration cops stalk polling places doesn’t seem far-fetched.
Already, election denial activist Jenny Beth Martin and her group, Tea Party Patriots, are going on tour to promote the SAVE Act, an anti-voting rights bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. Martin’s group sponsored a rally on January 6, 2021, and in 2024 she bragged that she was helping to train poll watchers for the election that year.
In his Tuesday morning monologue, Bannon also called for a “maximalist policy” on redrawing Congressional maps ahead of next year’s midterms instead of waiting until the end of the decade for the completion of the census. Trump initiated the fight, calling for Texas to redraw its maps to produce five more Republican seats in the House of Representatives. Some Democratic governors have matched Trump’s gambit, saying they’ll attempt to do the same in their own states.
In addition to Texas, Bannon called for “Indiana, Missouri, South Carolina, Florida, [and] Ohio,” to create new Republican seats through extreme gerrymandering in order to protect Trump from possible impeachment should Democrats win back the House. Trump has “a lot more than a year and a half’s worth of work left,” Bannon said. “He’s got more than this term and beyond.”
Bannon reiterated his threats on Wednesday, tying them explicitly to the midterms.
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