Donald Trump has said he regrets not getting the US national guard to seize voting machines after his 2020 election defeat ended his first presidency, as he continues to falsely claim that he won the race. But he has also questioned whether national guard troops would be “sophisticated enough” to pull something like that off.
Trump made those remarks in an interview with the New York Times published on Sunday. The outlet had questioned him about a plan reportedly floated in late 2020, after he lost that year’s presidential election to Joe Biden, to seize voting machines in several key swing states in an effort to search for evidence of fraud.
The Times reported that the idea was discussed during a December 2020 meeting in the Oval Office, where several of Trump’s advisers, including lawyer Sidney Powell and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, reportedly urged him to use the military or federal authorities to seize Dominion voting machines in states where Trump baselessly claimed that voter fraud had occurred, with the aim of conducting a recount.
According to reports published in 2022, the advisers even presented Trump with draft executive orders outlining how such a seizure could be carried out. One draft order, reported by Politico, reportedly referenced conspiracy theories about election fraud in Georgia and Michigan and would have ordered the defense secretary to “seize, collect, retain and analyze all machines, equipment, electronically stored information, and material records required for retention under” a US election records law.
Trump reportedly explored the idea. But the Times reported that the proposal was met with resistance from several of the Trump administration’s senior officials, including the then attorney general, William Barr, who reportedly “immediately shot down” the suggestion.
Ultimately, Trump did not move forward with the proposal. And in Sunday’s interview, Times reporters revisited the idea with the president.
“You once threatened, I think, during the 2020 election, to use the national guard to seize election boxes,” the reporter said. “You may remember that. You didn’t, in the end, do it.”
“Well, I should have,” Trump replied.
“Would that have been – would that be an option?” the reporter asked.
Referring to the national guard, Trump replied: “I don’t know that they are sophisticated enough. You know, they’re good warriors. I’m not sure that they’re sophisticated enough in the ways of crooked Democrats and the way they cheat, to figure that out.”
During the interview, Trump also repeated his unfounded claims that the 2020 election results were fraudulent and that he won. “I won three times,” he boasted.
Trump has not questioned the integrity of the 2024 election, which he won against Vice-President Kamala Harris to retake the White House. But Trump continues to falsely assert that the 2020 election was rigged in favor of Biden and at his expense.
Election integrity experts have said that the 2020 presidential race was the most secure to date. And dozens of legal challenges brought by Trump’s camp that sought to challenge the 2020 election failed.
