Trump Made Republicans Raise Their Hands and Pledge to Cheat

0:00Yamavav Resortant Casino at Sandman Well is bringing the biggest laughs to the stage. Break Taboos with Ali Wang on August 28th and 29th. Enjoy Ralph Barbosa's Dry Humor on September 18th and 19th. And don't miss Nikki Glazers on Apologetic Comedy November 19th. Tickets on sale now at YamavavTheater.com. Only at Yamavav Resortant Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in must be 21 to enter. Show button here. Football is finally back and prize picks is going crazy with the deals to start the season. Giving out promos every day in September. On prize picks, you can make all the picks you want. All in the same app. And now, prize picks is available nationwide. So what are you waiting for? Lock in for kickoff because everyone and everything is on prize picks. What you want? Download the app today and use code Spotify to get $150 InstaLian lineups if you win your first $5 lineup. prize picks, run your game.

1:00Donald Trump has a pattern of escalation around his voters' oppression and elections aversion. He starts with a lie. He makes the lie bigger. He then tries to either use official power or the courts to enforce the lie. When that fails, he doubles down and triples down on the lie, which can then lead to violence. Listen to me clearly. Donald Trump's plan for the midterm elections is to make it harder for you to vote and easier for him and Republicans to cheat. Hi, this is Mark Elias, founder of Democracy Docket. I am also a practicing voting rights and election lawyer. And I have been saying for months that the Republican Party has no plan to win the midterm elections. Other than to make it harder for Democrats to vote and easier for Republicans to cheat. For much of that time, I have been dismissed as an alarmist. The legacy media has said we need to present both sides. And I have been saying over and over again, one more time that Republicans plan.

2:04Donald Trump's only plan for the midterm elections is to make it harder for you to vote and easier for him to cheat. So look, I'm going to explain the latest blockbuster proof that what I've been saying is right all along. In fact, it's going to come out of Donald Trump's mouth himself. Now before I do, do me a favor and subscribe to Democracy Docket. There are free and premium options. You can do so by clicking on the link in front of you right now or in the description of this episode or go to democracy.com slash YouTube. Again, there are free options. If you can afford $10 a month, please consider becoming a premium member. All right. So I promised you that I'd give you the goods of Donald Trump admitting his plan to cheat in the midterm elections. So here it is. Please raise your right hand. I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States that loves us so much

3:07he can't even breathe. That I will go out with my family, my friends. I'll do it anyway. I don't care if I'm registered or not, I'm going to try and cheat like hell like they do. There's never been bigger cheaters said, okay, I am going to go out and I'm going to get my friends, my family, and we are going to vote on November 3rd or we are going to vote before that. Okay. So that's Donald Trump speaking at the midterm RNC or Republican convention from the stage. And it is quintessential Trump merging the two things he cares most about. The first complete blind loyalty, right? Here's the president of the United States asking people to raise their right hand and having them pledge to him the greatest president in the history of the United States that loves them so much he can't breathe. He is not the greatest president of the United States.

4:09In fact, he is routinely rated the worst president in the history of the United States. And people don't love him. They hate him. I mean, sure, some of the people in that room genuinely love him. They've been brainwashed. They are part of the Magicalt. But any poll that you see right now, any public opinion survey shows that Donald Trump is deeply, deeply unpopular. And I suspect that even among the people in that room, there are more people that hate him than love him. And he has engendered that hatred of him because he does not care about the people who he pretends to be serving. Right? I mean, Donald Trump is not doing anything to make the American people's lives better. He's not even doing anything to make the voters who voted for him their lives better. Calls are up. Affordability is down. We're at war in the Middle East.

5:09We are alienating our closest allies. He has imposed tariffs that have devastated farmers and other groups of Americans that are most sensitive to tariffs and the consequences of them being reciprocated. Donald Trump starts with this sort of sense that people should be pledging to him personally, which is an enathema to the American way of life. And then he goes on to get to the bottom line, which is that he wants people to pledge that they will go out with their family and their friends. And we get to the key part. I don't care if I'm registered or not, I'm going to cheat like hell. That's what he said. You saw him just say it. I don't care if I'm registered or not. I'm going to cheat like hell. That is the, and then he goes on to say like they do and we're going to vote on November 3rd. Okay. So here's the thing.

6:11When I've been telling you that Donald Trump's plan is to make it harder for you to vote and easier for him to cheat, people have been like, yeah, Mark, I get the voter suppression part. Yeah, I'll give you that. The Save Act of voter suppression law. The US Postal Service of voter suppression rule. The executive orders, the proof of citizenship, the things that he has had states do, the collection of voter files. Like I'll give you, Mark, that that's all probably in furtherance of voter suppression, making it harder for people to vote. Now the legacy media would then add, but that's because he wants to prevent voter fraud. And I've been saying no, Donald Trump doesn't give a shit about voter fraud. Donald Trump welcomes voter fraud if it helps Republicans. If you gave Donald Trump a choice between an election in which there was no voter fraud, it was perfectly pristine and Republicans lose control of the House and Senate or an election that was marred by rampant fraud.

7:13And Republicans won. He would take the second every day of the week. And so when the legacy media tries to draw this false dichotomy, this false equivalency, that somehow Donald Trump in the Republicans, they're just hyper sensitive to fraud and Democrats, they're just hyper sensitive to voter access. It is a lie. They are comparing the acts of a firefighter with the acts of an arsonist. I and the pro-democracy movement, we are trying to put out the fires that Donald Trump and the Republicans are setting. And when the legacy media just says, well, the arsonist is not perfect either. And maybe there are some redeeming qualities. The person lighting the fire says there's too many houses on the block. I mean, that's what you're getting. And it's very frustrating. It's very angering, but most importantly, it is dangerous for democracy because we need a accurate independent free press. And that is the reason why I started Democracy. That's because the legacy media outlets there in the tank for Donald Trump.

8:13I mean, not all of them, but most of them. I mean, CBS News can't shovel money if Donald Trump quick enough, can't make hiring decisions and firing decisions at police him. ABC News is now in its crosshairs, but let's not forget ABC News shouveled money into his pockets and those of his charities or whatever libraries over a nonsensical legal lawsuit. And then you got the Washington Post and CNN. I mean, it's just one big mess. So again, that's why I started Democracy. Now, can I help you or enjoying this video? I hope you've already subscribed. If you haven't, you should go ahead right now and click on the link in the description below and sign up for free. Or if you can afford $10 a month as a premium member because, man, we have to be getting the word out of what's happening. And what is happening is that Donald Trump is telling Republicans. He is making them pledge to him that they are going to cheat like hell, that they are going to vote whether they are registered or not. Yamabah Resort and Casino at San Manuel is bringing the biggest laughs to the stage.

9:13Break taboos with Ali Wang on August 28th and 29th. Enjoy Ralph Barbosis, dry humor on September 18th and 19th. Don't miss Nikki Glazer's unapologetic comedy November 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamabah Theatre dot com. Only at Yamabah Resort and Casino celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in must be 21 to enter. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile with your summer price forecast. Now, unfortunately, we're seeing rising costs across the country with possibility that big wireless hates you 100%. Now over here at Mint Mobile, we're seeing sunny skies and dropping prices every plan to just $15 a month. Give it a try at minemobile.com slash switch. Up from payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes in these extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. Again, not my words. Those are his words. I started by showing you what he had to say.

10:15We're litigating against Donald Trump and the Republicans. My law firm and I not democracy, not my law firm and I we are in in 90 cases in 43 states. Those are just voting elections, right? That's not everything we're litigating. That's just literally cases involving free and fair elections. The RNC, yeah, the Republican National Committee is the subject of a Axio story inside of the RNC's legal fight over election integrity and quotes. And this is an example of what I mean by the most sides, journalists. I mean, they are not involved in litigation, involving election integrity. They are involved in litigation to try to make it harder for you to vote and easier for Republicans to cheat. And then they go on to talk about the fact that they are involved in all of these cases. They use some numbers that are, you know, I can't replicate and they don't seem to want to be able to explain to the media where they come up with those numbers. But then they get to this part. And again, like this is a direct quote, the GOP's legal effort is often opposed by democratic

11:15party committees and aligned law firms such as Mark Elias's alliance law group. One RNC official described to be in quote, ambushed by the amount of litigation Elias's firm filed in a past election cycle. And look, I mean, if they feel ambushed, all they have to do is stop making it harder for people to vote. If they feel ambushed, maybe they should stop bringing lawsuits like the one they brought against Mississippi of all states to try to make it harder for 19 states or some odd to count ballots. This was a lawsuit that had they won in the US Supreme Court, whatever resulted in every single state throwing away into the trash every single mail in ballot that is received after election day, even if it is postmarked before, right? You've probably heard this debate before that some states count ballots postmarked by election day, even if they received a couple of days afterwards.

12:18Some states they don't. Every state should, I wrote about that in democracy. I could back in March of 2020 that every state should count those ballots. But the RNC wanted no states to be able to count those ballots. And so they sued the state of Mississippi. How convenient is that? Right? Like literally they go to the Republican state of Mississippi and say, we're going to sue you. Well, just if I say, I wasn't going to trust the idea that this was on the level or that Mississippi was going to fight hard. So we intervened as defendants on behalf of our clients. We represented those clients all the way to the US Supreme Court and we won. We won. Justice Coney Barrett, she wrote the opinion. That states, including Mississippi, can continue to count those male and ballots. RNC, big loss for them. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of votes and they know that that would have

13:20disenfranchised more Democrats and Republicans. I know some of you are sitting there being like, but wouldn't that hurt Republicans? Because rural male service, oh no, no, no, no. The RNC knew that if they were able to get this rule nationwide because of who votes by male and what states have which rules and which counties and where their battleground states, they knew it would harm Democrats more than Republicans. Don't take my word for it. They put it in their lawsuit. Yeah, the Republican National Committee said, we have standing to do this. This is important to us because this rule, as it currently stands, helps Democrats. Therefore, it hurts Republicans. And therefore, we want to challenge it. The part about making it harder to vote, I feel like, is really well settled. But Donald Trump gave us the other part, making it easier to cheat. And that is everyone. What as we head into the final weeks of the selection, we need to pay most close attention to. Yes, my law firm, as I mentioned, is litigating a lot of cases against voter suppression.

14:25And yes, we will litigate more cases against voter suppression. Yes, they are going to continue to try to close polling places. They're going to continue to try to erect barriers. They'll be long lines. Like all of the stuff that we have become used to, I promise you, as a lawyer and as a litigator, I'm on top of others are on top of, and those things will be litigated up. But I am here today to sound the alarm about the second part of what I keep saying, which is they want to make it harder to vote, but easier for a public in the city. Donald Trump knows that voter suppression alone won't be enough. I mean, he got another taste of that medicine when his map effort, his gerrymandor effort in Missouri blew up. First the Missouri Supreme Court, and then the US Supreme Court slammed the door shut on that effort for 2026.

15:27Next to the courageous work of a great organization called People Not Politicians in Missouri that collected ballot signatures to get an initiative on the ballot. The great work of some really spectacular lawyer in the state of Missouri. And then my law firm, the Lyslug Group, handled those two victories in the US Supreme Court. One decided only by Justice Kavanaugh and the other by the full court. There's a lot of naysayers out there who say, you know, we can never win in the Supreme Court. And you know, the worst thing we could do, worst thing we could do is send in a lious because he's so partisan. Justice's probably don't like it. Didn't turn out to be too partisan in this Missouri case twice. Back though to this question of them trying to cheat. After all, we've got a postmaster general who was willing to go along with this ridiculous executive order and promote, propose this rule and push it through rulemaking and now, you know, push and push and push on every court. And we also know that postal service mail has gotten slower.

16:28We know that we've seen lots of articles, democracy, not that it's covered it, the legacy media is covered it. We've seen lots of instances in which the postal service delays are in fact disenfranchising voters. That is why the RNC went to the Supreme Court in the Watson case, right? Because they know things are getting slower. So they wanted a hard cutoff of election day. But what if the postmaster general just decides to slow things up even more? Whatever he announces a policy that, you know, all mail needs to go through some other part of the country. Post offices have to close early, right? Like just use your imagination the way that the Trump administration and the bad guys do. They don't do norms. They don't do precedent. They don't even do law, right? I mean, so like they're definitely not going to abide by norms and precedent. If there is a way to cheat with the US Postal Service, Donald Trump has proven himself willing to cheat using the US Postal Service. And if you think that one Supreme court case or one way of doing it, one rule is going

17:35to be the end of Donald Trump's plan, then you have not been paying attention to Donald Trump. Because along with me saying over and over again, that Donald Trump wants to make it harder for you to vote and easier for him to cheat, there's something else I've been saying, which is that Donald Trump has a pattern of escalation around his voter suppression and election subversion. He starts with a lie. He makes the lie bigger. He then tries to either use official power or the courts to enforce the lie. And that fails. He doubles down and triples down on the lie, which can then lead to violence. Now if this sounds like 2020, it is. He lied about voting by mail before the election. He lied about voting by mail during the election. He lied about the results. We went to court. I had the honor of representing the President Biden and the Democratic Party in more than

18:3860 of those cases in beating Donald Trump and his allies. But after they lost those cases and the cases got more and more desperate, the lies got worse and worse and worse. And then, well, you know what happened next on January 6. I could say the same thing about what has happened with immigration. He told lies about migrants. The lies got more extreme. Came to power. He started using official government resources, deploying the military, deploying the national guard, doing last minute, a dark of night deportations to foreign gulags. When the courts were blocking him, when he was not succeeding, what happened next? ICE, CPB, two U.S. citizens shot dead in the streets of Minneapolis for all to say. So look, I'm not here to say that we're going to wind up with violence or what the violence will look like. Like, there are a lot of other factors that go into this.

19:40I am here to tell you though that we are on that escalation and we are nowhere near the end. We're nowhere near the end. We're at the, we've been through the live phase. We've been through the escalate the lies. We're in the litigation phase right now. But then we're going to see more escalation, right? Like we're not at the final crescendo, right? The final crescendo will come on election day during early vote or post election when we're talking about certification. But right now we're still powering back and forth and Donald Trump is still figuring out new ways to suppress voting rights. So towards that end, I want to flag for you one other major legal development. And this is a lawsuit that was filed by a bunch of civil rights organizations as well as the city of Denver asking a Washington DC federal judge to block plans to deploy our armed agents at the polls during the midterm elections. This is something that many of you have asked me about.

20:40I have offered commentary about and I've said that there will be litigation to prevent this from happening. And we have now seen the first of those cases, brought by an organization called Democracy Forward. I actually created Democracy Forward back in 2017. I still chair its board. But my law firm we're not litigating. They have, they have their own lawyers and they're doing a great job. And what they point out is that the stated policy of the administration that what Mark Wayne Mullin has said is the policy of DHS about the deployment of ICE agents of the polls flies in the face of federal criminal law. What he said recently was that he would only send ICE agents to the polls, quote, to conduct civil immigration and custom enforcement operations. And here's the deal that violates the federal criminal laws. The federal criminal laws prohibit any federal officials who are armed.

21:40Any armed agents from being at, quote, any place where general, a special election is held. Okay, that's what the criminal law says. The only exception to it and it is spelled out in the law is to, quote, repel the armed enemies of the United States. It is not to conduct immigration and customs enforcement operations. It is not to serve warrants. It's not any of the nonsense that they are going to use as a pretext that they have already rolled out as pretext. And so we've already seen the first lawsuit aimed at that. And it won't, like I said, I'm pretty confident it won't be the last, but these are very important cases. But this is an example of escalation in the way I described it, right? The males won't do its job. We'll have, we'll just send agents to the polls. And we will say they are there to conduct civil immigration and customs enforcement operations. That is not going to fly. The courts are going to shut this down. But again, I'm here to tell you they're going to escalate from there. And the biggest thing that we need to focus on other than the soft vector points, the things that they will target, like for example, other ways of getting at the postal service or

22:43mail-in ballots. Remember the part of the Trump executive order that we have not, that was not blocked? This is the state citizenship list. This is the DHS is going to send to the states a list of who they believe are eligible to vote. Along with a threat from the Department of Justice that they're going to prosecute election officials, election officials, you know, the clerks behind the desk, Secretary of State, they're going to prosecute them if well, people who are now allowed to vote vote. Right? These two things that the portal and this list, neither which we've seen a nightmare of, these are both voter suppression tools, but they are also election subversion tools. They are part of not just making it harder to vote, but they are definitely part of making it easier to cheat because it is not just that they will try to bully states in to not sending out mail-in ballots. We, states into removing people who shouldn't be removed because these lists have errors,

23:47but it is that after the states do that in the very run up to the election, you know, the week or so before and then in the immediate afterwards, this will be the pretext. This will be the excuse that Todd Blanche needs or that Todd Blanche thinks is enough to trigger his next steps to please Donald Trump. You know, in 2020, in December, it was reported that Donald Trump was presented with draft executive orders that would have sent the US military and others into, I think, was Georgia to seize ballots and voting order. And he didn't sign them in a very tense White House meeting with these would consider he ultimately not sign them. The reason he didn't sign them is because he was surrounded by staff, a White House council, a White House chief staff, and by senior people from the Department of Justice who were telling him he cannot do this.

24:51That if he does this, they will resign. They won't execute the order. He just couldn't pull it off. Do you think any of those people exist in this White House? I think Todd Blanche will say, sorry, you can't do this. I think Cash Patel. Yeah, if we all directors going to be served, we don't, we don't do that here. No, they're all going to do what he says. And if Donald Trump gets desperate enough and he has the pretext, as thin as it may be. Yamabah Resort and Casino at Sandman Well is bringing the biggest laughs to the stage. Break taboos with Ali Wang on August 28th and 29th. Enjoy Ralph Barbosis, dry humor on September 18th and 19th. And don't miss Nikki Glazer's unapologetic comedy November 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamabah Theatre dot com. Only at Yamabah Resort and Casino celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in must be 21 to enter. Show blood in here. Football is finally back and prize picks is going crazy with the deals to start the season,

25:55giving out promos every day in September. And prize picks, you can make all the picks you want all in the same app. And now prize picks is available nationwide. So what are you waiting for? Lock in for kickoff because everyone and everything is on prize picks. What you want? Download the app today and use code Spotify to get $150 InstaLian lineups. If you win your first $5 lineup, prize picks, run your game. He will seize ballots or at least till try. Again, doesn't mean he'll succeed, but it does mean he'll try. He just told a group of Republicans on national television. That they are too pledge to him. That they are going to cheat like hell. Okay, I mean, I don't know how clear he could be. I don't know how clear I can be. I can say till I'm blue in the face Donald Trump is going to make it harder for you to vote easier for him to cheat and then he's going to try to cheat.

26:57And the legacy media can treat that be as if I'm somehow, you know, just an extreme partisan. But this Donald Trump saying it, what why isn't this leading the news over and over and over again? Why isn't this a national scandal? Why aren't you hearing about this everywhere? Look, I started democracy docket because you aren't hearing about this everywhere. Even though this is the greatest threat to our country, every generation is divided by something that the silent generation, the Great Depression, the greatest generation. Well, there were two, the baby boomers were defined by Vietnam and its aftermath and watergate. Gen X, which I'm a member of, you know, 9-11 and the Iraq war at the aftermath of that, right? I can keep going forward, but I'm here to tell you is that the fight of this generation, what this generation will be known for, what this time period will be known for, is an authoritarian attack on democracy, an effort to cheat and subvert free and fair elections.

28:00And all of the hands of Donald Trump and his cronies, and it will also be known for the great cowardice of so many who had so much power to do so much and in fact did nothing or even worse, they didn't become capitulators, they became collaborators, they essentially went into business with this administration. I am not a punter. I am like a reluctant YouTuber, you know, we were, we were not on YouTube for a while, but I feel like I am not doing my job as a lawyer, as a US citizen, as someone who cares about democracy, if I am not also taking the time to speak out, as loudly as I can in as many places as I can on television, on podcasts, and yes, on this channel. But the place where I speak out most loudly and the place where I have invested the most is democracy docket, which is the free news and information outlet I found it in 2020, for precisely moments like now, you need to subscribe if you have not already. It is a favor to me. It is free to subscribe. We do not send you spam. We don't send you

29:04stuff you don't want. We don't send you, we don't sell your email list. So look, please subscribe now. And if you can afford the $10 a month, $120 a year to become a premium member, here's what I'll tell you. Number one, you will get additional premium content. You will get my writings, for example, which are usually paywalled, not always, but usually. You'll get invited to exclusive events. But most importantly, you will help democracy docket grow and thrive in an era where it has never been more important that it grow and it thrive. The link to become a democracy docket subscriber is on the screen in front of you. It's also in the description of this episode or you can go to democracy docket.com slash YouTube. Now, in addition to subscribing to democracy docket, every one of you has something else you can do. You can make sure that you have a plan to vote, that your friends and family have a plan to vote, and that you will not allow Donald Trump's voter suppression efforts to dissuade you from figuring out how you're going to vote and vote.

30:07And then you have to share that information with others. We cannot let him win because he scares people out of voting or convinces them their vote won't count. Everybody said the courts are rigged. Everybody said we'd never win. Everybody said Missouri was going to have to live under an unconstitutional legal map because Donald Trump wanted it and the Republicans were going to have their way. And the good people of Missouri, they fought like hell. They didn't cheat. They played by the rules. And first they won a remarkable victory before a five two conservative spring court. Then with my law firm at the lead, they won two cases in the US Supreme Court. In the end, the Secretary of State, the Republican Secretary of State, was held in contempt by that saying five two conservative states Supreme Court. So when we fight, we can win. Doesn't mean we'll always will, but we can. And history has proven so far that if you have

31:08bet on the pro democracy team against Donald Trump, you have won every single time. So look, I've asked you to subscribe to Democracy Docket. I've given you some order, marching orders and suggestions moving forward. If you're still here, you should also like this video, share it and hit the, uh, hit the subscribe button and the bell to make sure you're alerted whenever there's new content posted on this channel. I'm Mark Elias. I'll see you next time. Play with your club Serrano Card and on September 20th, you could be one of five winners of a Rolex watch. Plus, all winners will advance to the finale at Palm's Casino Resort Las Vegas for a chance to take home a rarity. The second Mustang Dark Horse ever produced on September 26th. Two properties, six winners only at Yamaha Resort and Casino, your California to Vegas connection. Details at

32:09Yamaha.com must be 21 or older to enter participate. Please gamble responsibly. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile with your Summer Price forecast. Now, unfortunately, we're seeing rising costs across the country with possibility that big wireless hates you 100%. Now, over here at Mint Mobile, we're seeing sunny skies and dropping prices every plan to just $15 a month. Give it a try at minemobile.com slash switch. Up from payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12 month plan required, $15 per month equivalent taxes in V's extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow in work as busy, see terms.