On Thursday night, I appeared on Chris Hayes’ television show to discuss Donald Trump’s attacks on free and fair elections. He began by asking me why Trump is once again attacking mail-in voting: “Is it just a paranoid obsession, or is there some angle he is working?”
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August 25, 2025
On Thursday night, I appeared on Chris Hayes’ television show to discuss Donald Trump’s attacks on free and fair elections. He began by asking me why Trump is once again attacking mail-in voting: “Is it just a paranoid obsession, or is there some angle he is working?”
Without hesitation, I responded with the obvious: “Democrats benefit from mail-in voting. One of the mistakes people make is they try to make Donald Trump’s thinking more complicated than it is.”
Trump does not play three-dimensional chess. In fact, he doesn’t play chess at all — checkers would be a stretch. Trump is more like a tic-tac-toe aficionado who aspires to be a Wordle champion.
When Trump says he wants to ban mail-in voting, it is because it is an easy way to prevent Democrats from voting. When he says he wants to ban certain voting machines, he means the equipment most likely to be used in blue cities and states. When he says he wants to take control of vote counting and tabulation, it is because he wants to stop victorious Democrats from taking office.
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