Throughout her Friday night time opening monologue on The Briefing, MSNBC’s Jen Psaki theorized that President Trump was conspiring to “suppress the vote any method that he can.” She cited numerous loosely-related administration efforts and jumbled them collectively as proof of Trump trying to wrongfully sway midterm outcomes.
Psaki first talked about the DOJ’s announcement to manage election displays to California and New Jersey as proof of chicanery: “And a few of these counties simply occur to be the place key Congressional races will happen a 12 months from now, which is unquestionably not a coincidence. We should always see all of this as a trial run.”
Psaki failed to say that California and New Jersey Republicans requested the displays.
She admitted election monitoring was not exceptional, however determined the current information deserved “context,” primarily that of the nationwide redistricting battle:
Democrats couldn’t swallow their very own drugs when it got here to gerrymandering. Stealing was while you stuff or swipe poll packing containers, which has completely by no means occurred earlier than. And the current Nationwide Guard deployments had nothing to do with any upcoming elections. Duh.
Psaki then relentlessly badgered Legal professional Common Pam Bondi and Assistant Legal professional Common Harmeet Dhillon for his or her historical past of questioning previous election outcomes. Let’s not neglect that Psaki’s personal White Home Press Secretary successor, Karine Jean-Pierre, was an election denier herself at one level in historical past.
She additionally talked about the Pentagon’s new “speedy response” drive, which we knew little or no about however needed to stoke worry anyway.
After connecting all of the dots together with her rhetorical purple twine, Psaki made her final conclusion:
Assuming the 22nd Modification wouldn’t be repealed, Trump couldn’t run for a 3rd time period. So, why would Trump want to care what voters suppose anymore? And all the efforts that Psaki named might be straight related to populist MAGA help.
However Psaki didn’t wish to finish the monologue on a downer, and gave her viewers a call-to-action, “So, when the President’s prime allies begin encouraging him to disregard the structure, to carry on to energy, when the President is clearly gearing as much as suppress the vote in any method that he can, we sort of have to concentrate.”
Suppress the vote? The true menace was the potential for the liberal media to spew sufficient lies, misinformation, and obfuscation that it might sway voters on the margins and switch states blue within the Electoral School.
The transcript is beneath. Click on “develop” learn:
MSNBC’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki
October 24, 2025
9:01:12 p.m. EST
JEN PSAKI: Okay, okay. In some other political period that is one thing I might roll my eyes at. I imply, one thing I might say, “Let’s not spend an excessive amount of time on it.” And I truthfully, I sincerely hope that sooner or later we get again to that world. I feel all of us do. However since we live on this period, on this fully tousled second in time, I feel it is necessary that you just hear this from one of many architects of Donald Trump’s MAGA motion, his former marketing campaign supervisor and adviser, Steve Bannon.
[Cuts to video]
STEVE BANNON [on The Economist, 10/23/25]: He is gonna get a 3rd time period. So Trump ’28, Trump is gonna be president in ‘28. And folks simply kind of get accommodated with that.
ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES [on The Economist, 10/23/25]: So, what in regards to the twenty second Modification?
BANNON [on The Economist, 10/23/25]: There’s many various options. On the applicable time we’ll lay out what the plan is. However there is a plan, and President Trump would be the President in ‘28.
[Cuts back to live]
PSAKI: Okay, let’s begin simply with all of the caveats. I imply, Steve Bannon says issues like that to get consideration. He relishes the eye. He spends hours on tv — or sort of on his personal streaming service day by day. He loves the pot stirring. However this is not actually about Steve Bannon. It is truly about his former boss, Donald Trump, and the way far he’s keen to go when his supporters and former advisers and anybody who’s in his ear eggs him on like that.
I imply, let’s be completely clear right here, as that query throughout that interview alluded to, the Structure explicitly bars Donald Trump from serving a 3rd time period as President. However that has not stopped him from brazenly musing about it. Hasn’t stopped him from falsely claiming there are legit methods to do it. And it hasn’t stopped him from selling Trump 2028 merchandise. And never even simply to his supporters. I imply, he is undoubtedly doing it to them. Bear in mind when Trump 2028 hats simply sort of randomly appeared within the oval workplace throughout his assembly with Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer of all individuals? I imply, that occurred.
And perhaps you suppose all of that’s simply trolling. Perhaps a few of it’s. Simply Trump attempting to get an increase out of his to get an increase out of his critics. In any case, it isn’t what he says that issues, proper? It is what he truly does. However while you take a look at what Donald Trump is definitely doing with regards to our elections, the prospect of Him attempting to defy the Structure to stay in workplace does not appear so onerous to imagine. And I am not simply speaking about his final failed try and illegally keep in energy on January sixth. I am speaking about issues he’s doing and his administration is doing proper now.
I imply, in the present day, the Justice Division introduced that it plans to ship election displays to a few half dozen counties in California and New Jersey to observe polling websites throughout their upcoming elections taking place simply 11 days from now. And a few of these counties simply occur to be the place key Congressional races will happen a 12 months from now, which is unquestionably not a coincidence. We should always see all of this as a trial run. And I’ll converse with a prime election lawyer, who additionally lives in California, about this later within the present.
Look, election monitoring is one thing previous administrations have executed, often not in off 12 months elections. However let’s additionally simply put this in a little bit of context. Trump’s allies are attempting to overturn a key part of the Voting Rights Act. Trump is sending navy into the streets of American cities, partly to intimidate individuals from collaborating within the democratic course of. They’ve been pressuring — as everyone knows, we have been masking this quite a bit — Republican leaders in purple states throughout the nation to redo their Congressional maps, to steal again seats. And, now, Trump needs to place his hand-picked lackeys in control of monitoring elections.
That is to not point out that the Trump officers, who’ve been tapped for this election monitoring operation, are these two women: Legal professional Common Pam Bondi and Trump’s head of the civil rights division, Harmeet Dhillon, each of whom are election deniers, after all. I imply, within the days after the 2020 election, Pam Bondi, who had already been one among Trump’s attorneys throughout his impeachment trial, sued the state of Pennsylvania, falsely claiming that Trump gained the state he truly misplaced by 80,000 votes.
[Cuts to video]
PAM BONDI [on Fox News, 11/05/2020]: We’re nonetheless on the bottom in Pennsylvania. I am right here proper now and we’re not going anyplace till they declare that we gained Pennsylvania. [Transition] The nice residents who’re all supporting us in Pennsylvania, their votes do not depend by these faux ballots which are coming in late. And again to —
STEVE DOOCY [on Fox News, 11/05/2020]: Pam.
BONDI [on Fox News, 11/05/2020]: — statement, they don’t seem to be letting us watch the method.
DOOCY [on Fox News, 11/05/2020]: Pam, did you simply say, “faux ballots”?
BONDI [on Fox News, 11/05/2020]: There may very well be. That is the issue.
[Cuts back to live]
PSAKI: In fact, there weren’t faux ballots. There was no legit proof of faux ballots. However Pam Bondi went out and promoted Trump’s conspiracy principle that the election had been stolen. And now Trump is placing her in control of monitoring polling locations. And Trump’s different new prime election monitor is unquestionably not any higher.
Harmeet Dhillon was additionally an adviser to Trump’s 2020 election marketing campaign, and identical to Bondi, she spent that point selling false election conspiracies. And she or he even referred to as upon Trump’s conservative Supreme Court docket appointees to place politics over precept and assist overturn the outcomes.
[Cuts to video]
HARMEET DHILLON [on Fox Business, 11/05/2020]: Whereas we’re ready for the US Supreme
Court docket, which — of which the president has nominated three justices to step in and do one thing. And, hopefully, Amy Coney Barrett will come by way of and decide it up.
[Cuts back to live]
PSAKI: She then continued to advertise those self same debunked election conspiracies for years after that.
[Cuts to video]
DHILLON [on Back to the People Podcast, 10/04/2024]: A number of unelected bureaucrats, or elected maybe, modified the result of an election in a number of counties, and that modifications the result of the nationwide election. That is what occurred in 2020.
[Cuts back to live]
PSAKI: Pure conspiracy theorist proper there. Now, she continuously additionally refers back to the Democratic Get together as enemies, with some fairly colourful and fairly out-there comparisons.
[Cuts to video]
DHILLON [on Right Side Broadcasting Network, 07/15/2023]: We are able to determine our enemies by a lot of names. You may name them socialists, communists, they have been referred to as maoists at occasions, vital theorists, postmodernists, post-colonialists, typically they’re fascists. A few of them name themselves proudly, “Democrats.” However it does not matter which identify they use as a result of they’re all synonyms for Marxism.
[Cuts back to live]
PSAKI: And simply hearken to how she talks about voting within the very states the place she’s going to quickly be in control of monitoring elections.
[Cuts to video]
DHILLON [on Breitbart News, 04/16/2020]: Massive states like California, which has over 40 million individuals, and another liberal states, and admittedly some conservative jurisdictions as nicely, have executed a fairly poor job of constructing certain that solely individuals entitled to vote are literally voting and eligible to vote of their states.
ALLUM BOKHARI [on Breitbart News, 04/16/2020]: What’s an even bigger menace, Vladimir Putin interfering within the election or corrupt Democrat officers interfering within the election?
DHILLON [on Breitbart News, 04/16/2020]: Yeah, undoubtedly the latter.
[Cuts back to live]
PSAKI: Donald Trump is giving election deniers, like her, that unprecedented new energy over our elections. And Pam Bondi and Harmeet Dhillon usually are not the one ones in positions of energy. Heather Honey is a longtime chief within the election denier motion, and in 2020 she misrepresented voter information to falsely declare Pennsylvania had reported extra votes than voters, a lie that Trump, after all, went on to repeat. And after Trump gained the 2024 election, Heather Honey argued that he might declare a nationwide emergency to take management of elections from state and native governments. And that advice apparently sounded so ingenious to Trump, he appointed her to an election integrity job on the Division of Homeland Safety. Likewise, conservative activist Marcy McCarthy spent — unfold debunked claims about voting machines in Georgia in the course of the 2020 election. Trump made her the Director of Public Affairs at our nation’s prime cybersecurity company.
I imply, these are simply a number of the individuals who may have key roles in authorities in the course of the subsequent election. And every day we get increasingly more alarming indications about what they could be able to do. You may keep in mind a number of months in the past when the Washington Submit reported that the Pentagon was making ready a speedy response drive for crowd management throughout the nation. Nicely, yesterday, Pete Hegseth didn’t deny these reviews that the Pentagon is certainly making ready that speedy response drive forward of the midterms, saying he couldn’t give, quote, “particulars on one thing that could be within the planning course of.” That is not that comforting.
Now, taking all of that collectively will get simpler and simpler to think about that Trump himself is actively contemplating methods to carry on to energy in 2028, or on the very least, that he’ll abuse his energy to assist his Republican allies attempt to keep in workplace in 2026. These are clearly not the actions of a celebration that thinks it may possibly depend on the help of voters to remain in energy, or their very own insurance policies. I imply, while you take a look at how they’re working the nation proper now, it is like they don’t seem to be even attempting to win over voters.
They’re actively preventing Democrats in Congress over the extension of well being care subsidies, which suggests prices are going to go method up for lots of people except one thing is finished. A brand new evaluation from the Washington Submit finds that voters who get their well being care from the Inexpensive Care Act market will see their premiums rise by a mean of 30 p.c if Republicans get their method.
Now, at a time when the price of residing is the primary concern for many voters, they’re doing that. We have seen electrical energy costs rise by almost 10 p.c on Trump’s watch. On the verge of a vital election in New Jersey, Trump is canceling a significant infrastructure challenge in that state with a view to punish Democrats. On verge of one other vital election within the swing state of Virginia, Trump’s funds cuts and authorities shutdown has led to large traces. You may see them there at Virginia’s — at meals banks, as Virginia’s many federal employees go with out pay.
Completely nothing they appear to be doing proper now appears geared in direction of successful extra voters, successful extra individuals over. You may’t actually take a look at a single factor they’re doing and suppose the aim of that coverage is to win fashionable help. So, when the President’s prime allies begin encouraging him to disregard the structure, to carry on to energy, when the President is clearly gearing as much as suppress the vote in any method that he can, we sort of have to concentrate. However this nation remains to be a democracy. Elections do nonetheless matter. It may require clear and decisive victory on the poll field to show People won’t be intimidated by these ways.
(…)
