Steele: Trump's latest election play is to ‘BS the American people’

Jason, I'll start with you here at the table. How are you reading this effort right now by the president to sort of BS the American people into believing that every little election that's taking place out there is somehow fraudulent, that there are bad actors in place doing nefarious things? The only bad actors that are being put in place are his people. Here's the thing. I can give you a worse actor, and that's Spencer Pratt. And that's the only reason he cares about L.A., because Spencer Pratt is the reality TV shark, the MAGA person, everything else like that. That's the only reason Donald Trump cares about Los Angeles. It's not Steve Hinton. We already know what's going on. We already know who the top two candidates are going to be for the gubernatorial election. It is because he is friends with a reality TV star who makes a lot of noise, and he figures I'm going to send people there to try and intimidate L.A. voters. It's not going to work. Karen Bass is going to end up winning, barring something strange. But it just goes to show the shame that we should all feel that we have a government where the personal piccadillos and frustrations of the president dictate government policy. There are real investigations that could be happening right now, but instead you have AUSAs running around Los Angeles trying to figure out what's going on with voting there because Trump personally cares about it. And that's the part that's the most shameful for me, because there ain't no voter fraud there. Spencer Pratt is a joke and a clown, and I say that in all sincerity. His own family has said things to that end. But Trump wants him to win, and he wants him to be mayor of Los Angeles. Let's tie this conversation, Michelle, that we've been having about what is transpiring in California to the president's pick for director of national intelligence, Bill Pulte. Senator Mark Warner was on our air yesterday. I want you to take a listen to what he had to say about Pulte. This guy has found a way to weaponize housing information. And you're going to give him the keys to all of our 18 intelligence agencies. This guy could disclose our most classified secrets. He will do whatever Donald Trump says. And the idea that he's kind of acting, you know, for six months, which puts him through the election. So I have huge fears about election interference. So that housing reference there, of course, to Lisa Cook and to Letitia James, this is a person who's proven before he is willing to abuse the systems of power and government in order to wage war against the president's enemies. I think if you if you're someone you hear Senator Warner say that or you hear Senator Markey say it, it might out of context seem like a little pie in the sky or a little alarmist. But then they go ahead and do what they're doing today in California. And you're reminded this is not theoretical. It is playing out in real time. Look, I mean, of course, it shouldn't be alarmist. We've seen them do this over and over again. I mean, we saw them indict James Comey over a photograph of seashells. And so this is you know, this is kind of a frog in the pot situation where people have grown somewhat acculturated to such to sort of such outrageous figures being in the government that the sheer obscenity of this isn't really kicking in. Right. I mean, obviously, this is a government full of hacks and apparatchiks. They still think Bill Pulte is somebody who's on a different level, who's willing to use access to the information that he gets by way of his office, as we saw at like a relatively a much less significant role than someone who's going to oversee all of our intelligence agencies. Right. He's just able to use what he can find in mortgage documents to try and torment Trump's enemies. Now, think about having access to all of the information, to the collective information of the American intelligence agencies. This is really police state stuff. You know, the intelligence community and the agencies, they exist to protect Americans from foreign adversaries. But the president is not only talking about he often talks about using these intelligence agencies. He talked about this very openly with Tulsi Gabbard. Lest we forget, the old ODNI was literally in Fulton County the day that the government came and took ballots from the 2020 election. And we still to this day don't know what she was doing there. I think that this is also about claiming that some foreign interference happened in the elections this November. And frankly, I think it's a trial run for what they're going to do in the presidential election in 2028. The answer people often we say these things. We have these conversations and the folks in the comments on Instagram are like, what do we do? This is insane. What can we do? Well, Michael still says the answer is we got to overwhelm the ballot box and need to call the things out when we see it. I would agree with that. Do you have anything else to throw on the table? Yeah, you got it. You got it. It's November. That's all there is. Yeah, it sounds it sounds simplistic. And I don't say this from a high horse. You have to become ungovernable. You just you have to be difficult. You have to you have to not just you do need the consent of the people to govern in a democracy. You have you have to protest the police. You have to protest ice. You have to write letters. You have to email. You have to constantly say, I am not happy with this thing you're doing. In addition to voting, this is the one time where the outside activists and the inside centrist can have them work together because you have to do both. But here's the thing, and I don't know why anyone is surprised about this. Every single person that Donald Trump hires is someone who's going to help him try to sort of solidify his authoritarian control. Whether it's Pulte, whether it's Tulsi Gabbard that he got rid of, whether it's Carte Blanche, sorry, Todd Blanche, whatever it is, right? I mean, because that's basically what his nickname should be at this point, because he's going to let Trump do whatever he is willing to do. Everyone he hires is dedicated to keeping him in power and keeping him in office. So I also think and this is something people forget. Call Republicans. Call your Republican senator. Call your Republican congressperson. Make their lives inconvenient. Tell them, hey, this is a thing that's a bridge too far, because as we've seen, even in, say, South Carolina, right? Who would have known South Carolina is like, all right, we're not going to do redistricting the way that you want. Think of how much pushback you had in Indianapolis, which you had in Indiana for a while. You can call your members of Congress and say, I don't like this, and maybe it'll end up making a difference. Yeah, I think, Michelle, that's a very important point. And I'm curious, from your perspective, as you cover these stories and you write about both the politics and the culture and how they come together, what's your read on how these narratives are setting up with people out there? I really want to sort of zero in on something that Jason said, and that is, you know, if my U.S. senator is a Republican and I'm a Democrat in that state, yeah, call him. There's this mindset out there amongst the people that, well, I can only call the Democrat if I'm represented by a Democrat, or I can only call the Republican. No, representation is of the people. And so I think the more we can expand Americans' brains around this, because we gave up on teaching them civics, so they have no clue of how our government works in the first place in many instances or fully understand the complications and the not-so-much complications of the Constitution. There you go. So we rely on folks like you to help tell the stories, to help contextualize the moments. What are you seeing and reading as you look out at this landscape and you see the narratives around O'Pultey and others that Jason talked about? Well, I mean, part of the problem with Donald Trump's corruption is that it is so vast that it sort of challenges the limits of human cognition. And so there are only so many things that people can focus on at one time, although I really do think that this one, this guy is worth it. I mean, it's worth it because he's so dangerous. And Jason is absolutely right that anybody they put in these positions is going to be a lackey. But there are decrees. You know, you see sort of one person go and the person who replaces them be willing to go that much further. But also because this is somebody that even some Senate Republicans are uncomfortable with, right? They've already said he has no chance of actually being confirmed. It's why he's in an acting position. And so you're seeing some legislation be held up as long as he's there. And I think you could there could be much more of a groundswell because this choice is just so outrageous.