Jen Psaki Sounds Alarm on Trump Over New Election Rant: ‘Laying the Groundwork’ to ‘Undermine’ Midterms

MS NOW host and former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki ripped President Donald Trump’s newest rant about taking over elections, warning he’s “laying the groundwork” to undermine the midterms if he loses.

NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Llamas  scored a big exclusive interview with Trump that’s set to air on Super Bowl Sunday, with clips rolling out in advance. In one exchange, Trump is pressed about his remarks this week on Republicans “taking over” elections.

On Wednesday’s edition of MS NOW’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki, Psaki sounded the alarm over that exchange, in which Trump gives a qualified response when asked if he will “accept” election results:

JEN PSAKI: OK. So much to get to tonight. Lots and lots and lots of news. And as I was watching today, I was thinking about the fact that if there was any question, any question at all, from anywhere, from anyone about whether or not American democracy is under threat right now, the president of the United States was asked just hours ago about his calls for an unconstitutional federal takeover of elections. He was also asked about whether or not he will accept the will of the voters in November. And see for yourself what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We can’t allow cheating in elections. Now if we need to put in federal controls as opposed to state controls, remember this, they’re really an agent. They’re really accumulating the votes for who wins an election. If they can’t do it honestly and it can’t be done properly and timely, then something else has to happen.

TOM LLAMAS, HOST, “NBC NIGHTLY NEWS”: Will you trust the results of the midterms if Republicans lose control of Congress?

TRUMP: Of — I will, if the elections are honest.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PSAKI: Trump is laying the groundwork. We all know this. We’ve all watched what he has been doing. And he has really upped his game in the last few days. He’s laying the groundwork to undermine the validity of the midterm elections. Make absolutely no mistake about it. I mean, it’s the same language he used in the lead-up to the 2020 election, the same language he used to sow doubt in the outcome if he did not win. And when he says — when you just heard him say “if the elections are honest,” he means if his party wins, that’s what he means.

And there’s a simple and very obvious reason he’s doing this, and it’s because he’s increasingly unpopular. He does not think he and his party can win on their own. And there’s reason he thinks that, because a new Quinnipiac poll out today finds Trump’s approval rating is now just 37 percent. And that’s 3 points down from where he was in that same poll just three weeks ago.

On every single issue, from the economy to immigration to foreign policy, Trump’s approval rating continues to sink to new and deeper lows. And so Trump is doing what he has done his entire life. He is trying to lie and cheat his way out of it. He’s denying that there is any way voters could reject the path that he and his party have put us on. And that’s not just Trump’s self-delusion. It’s an intentional strategy.

And a crucial element of that strategy, a critical part of how he tries to lie his way out of unpopularity is to try and make it so that his narrative is the only one people hear. That’s his dream. That’s what he wants to happen. And I don’t just mean by being louder than his critics or by saying things that are more outlandish than his critics.

Since taking office, Trump has done everything he can to cut off access to reliable information about his administration. He banned the Associated Press from the White House Press Pool. He killed all federal funding for public broadcasting. He shuttered the overseas offices of Voice of America News. He took control of the military news outlet Stars and Stripes.

His minion over at the FCC has made mob-like threats against broadcast networks that do any sort of critical coverage of his administration. He’s threatened news organizations with lawsuits over their reporting, sometimes getting them to fork over millions of dollars that they could have spent on quality journalism. He’s put new restrictions on Pentagon reporters, forcing the most legitimate press out of the building altogether and replaced them with right-wing propagandists. And that’s not to mention what he’s done to the White House Briefing Room, which is make it Kremlin-esque. His FBI has even taken the extreme step of raiding the home of a Washington Post reporter who happened to be very well-sourced within the federal government that he’s currently running.

At every turn, he’s tried to cut off the public’s access to truth, to real fact-based reporting about how he’s running the country. What he desperately wants is for his warped version of the story to be the only thing out there, unchallenged, unchecked, no one questioning it.

Watch above via MS NOW’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki.

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