MAGA commentator Steve Bannon has expressed support for Donald Trump’s push to nationalize elections, calling on the president to deploy ICE officers and the military to polling stations.
Trump said in a podcast interview on Monday that “Republicans should nationalize voting” even though the Constitution gives states clear jurisdiction over election administration. His call sparked outrage among Democrats and largely fell on deaf ears within the Republican Party — but Bannon, a conservative firebrand who has been a prominent voice in election conspiracy theories, strongly supported the idea.
The former White House strategist called on the Trump administration to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to polling places to prevent non-citizens from voting, citing debunked conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
“We’re going to have ICE siege the polls in November. We’re not going to sit here and let you steal the country again,” Bannon said on his podcast on Tuesday. “You can whine and cry and throw the toys out of the stroller all you want, but we will never allow an election to be stolen again.”
The conservative influencer reiterated his response a day later, calling on Trump to go further and send the U.S. Army to polling locations. Federal law prohibits the president from deploying the military “wherever a general or special election is held,” and in some states it is a crime to carry a gun in or near a polling place.
“President Trump has to nationalize elections. You have to – and I think it’s not just ICE – you have to call in the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions [Divisions] “You have to go around every poll and make sure that only people with ID, … people who are actually registered to vote and U.S. citizens can vote in this election,” Bannon said Wednesday.
In recent months, Democrats have warned that Trump might send troops to polling stations, raising concerns about possible voter intimidation. White House chief of staff Suzy Wiles dismissed the idea in an interview with Vanity Fair last year, calling it “absolutely wrong.”
Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act, a 19th-century law that allows the president to deploy the military to suppress insurrection or public disorder. Last month, he threatened to use the law to send troops to Minnesota, citing chaos caused by his administration’s immigration crackdown — which resulted in the deaths of two people in Minneapolis — but later walked back his remarks, saying, “I don’t see any reason to use the law right now.”
Trump’s push to consolidate federal election power comes as his administration steps up pressure on Democratic-led states to share voter information with the federal government, with the Justice Department suing nearly two dozen states over their electoral rolls and the FBI seizing 2020 ballots from an election agency in Georgia.
After the 2020 presidential election, Trump considered signing an executive order directing the military to seize voting machines, but he ultimately never followed through on that threat. He said in an interview with The New York Times last month that he “should” use the National Guard to occupy election boxes, but did not say whether he would consider doing so in the future.
Democrats were quick to condemn his call to nationalize elections, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer calling the proposal “egregiously illegal” and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) calling it a “dictatorial takeover of our election process.”
Still, Trump continued his threats on Tuesday, telling reporters in the Oval Office that states were merely “agents of the federal government” — a misinterpretation of the Constitution’s mandate to administer elections.
But Republican lawmakers were unwilling to unite to address the threat, with Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledging that “managing elections has always been the responsibility of the states.” Senate Majority Leader John Thune also expressed skepticism, saying he was “not in favor of federalizing elections.”
