Senator Bernie Sanders simply laughed when he heard President Trump’s recent demand that Republicans should nationalize U.S. elections in over a dozen states ahead of the November midterms, as per The Hill. The Vermont senator was shown a clip of the president discussing his remarks and was asked why he was laughing. Sanders quickly explained that he was thinking back to the 2020 election aftermath, specifically the infamous phone call President Trump made to the Georgia Secretary of State.
“Because I was thinking this guy, on the phone, after the 2020 election, talking to the secretary of state in Georgia, and saying to him, ‘All I need, get me 11,000, whatever it is, votes that I can win Georgia,” Sanders explained. “This is Mr. Honesty and Mr. Integrity, who provoked an insurrection on January 6, so that the election would be overturned,” Sanders continued. It’s beyond comprehension, he argued, that anyone would trust President Trump to run an honest election for even a minute.
Sanders also pointed out that the president clearly hasn’t read the Constitution, which specifies that states, not the federal government, are responsible for running elections. President Trump had originally made the remarks during an interview earlier this week, stating that Republicans “should say, ‘We want to take over, we should take over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places.’” He insisted Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.
This debate over who controls the voting process is likely to get even more intense as November approaches
The president doubled down on those comments the next day, telling reporters in the Oval Office that “if a state can’t run an election, I think the people behind me should do something about it.” He specifically referenced cities like Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Detroit, which are typically run by Democratic officials, claiming these locations are experiencing “horrible corruption on elections.”
When it was noted that the 15 states President Trump listed were the exact states he lost in the 2020 presidential election, Sanders simply deadpanned, “What a shock.” He believes it’s obvious that every state the president won was, in his view, “perfectly honest, no problem. Just the states that he lost.” Sanders concluded that the president is “a demagogue, who is an authoritarian and is moving this country into a very, very dangerous direction.”
Constitutionally speaking, the states have the authority to hold and oversee elections. While Congress does have the power to “at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations,” the idea of a sweeping federal takeover, or nationalizing elections, is widely opposed by many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
Even some prominent Republicans aren’t on board with the president’s idea. Senator Rand Paul, for example, pushed back against the remarks, saying directly that he wasn’t in favor of nationalizing elections because that’s just not what the Constitution dictates. Similarly, Senate Majority Leader John Thune noted that while he supports common-sense measures like only citizens voting and showing ID at polling places, he is “not in favor of federalizing elections, no. I think that’s a constitutional issue.”
Meanwhile, other lawmakers are viewing the president’s calls as a sign of a much larger, ongoing threat. Senator Mark Warner, a top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, linked President Trump’s remarks to other recent events, including the unusual sight of National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard being present during an FBI search of an elections office in Fulton County, Georgia.
Warner believes that the combination of these incidents isn’t just about relitigating the 2020 outcome. He argues that President Trump’s statement alone makes clear that the threat to election security and the basic premise of democracy is “forward-looking to 2026 and 2028 and, candidly, to the institutions that safeguard our democracy.” Warner’s final warning is pretty stark: “If it doesn’t scare the heck out of you, it should.”
Published: Feb 5, 2026 11:30 am