“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough could not help but laugh Wednesday morning listening to a clip of President Trump saying that he does not see “how anybody can challenge” his new executive order rewriting mail-in voting laws.
The executive order requires, among other things, the Department of Homeland Security to create a database of U.S. citizens eligible to vote and work with the U.S. Postal Service to use that list for absentee ballots. While Trump argued that there may be a lot of “rogue judges, very bad, bad people” who try to legally challenge the executive order, he repeatedly said he doesn’t see “how they can challenge it.”
“Morning Joe” co-host Willie Geist promptly responded to Trump’s remarks, telling Scarborough, “Uh, Joe, everyone will challenge it and do so very easily, because they’ll slide a copy of the Constitution across the table.” His comment prompted Scarborough to break out into a fit of incredulous laughter.
“He says it with a straight face, which is extraordinary! It’s such a preposterous position. He knows it’s unconstitutional,” Scarborough said. “He knows it’s unconstitutional, just like he knows that he can’t change the 14th Amendment with the stroke of a pen. I mean, if presidents could do that, we would have had presidents changing the Constitution left and right.”
You can watch the full “Morning Joe” segment yourself in the video below.
Scarborough argued that Trump’s latest moves are all just an attempt on his part to deflect blame if and when Republicans experience sweeping setbacks in this year’s midterm elections.
“What he’s doing here, whether it’s trying to seize ballots in Georgia and doing all of these things he knows are wildly unconstitutional and hoping that he’ll be able to intimidate judges, that’s not working right now. He’s merely setting up his argument,” Scarborough explained. “He knows he’s going to lose.”
The Washington Post columnist and frequent “Morning Joe” panelist David Ignatius added that Trump’s plan to try to federalize voting has been a part of the president’s strategy since he retook office in Jan. 2025.
“He has been on course to federalize elections, to change the fundamentals of the system, at least since he began this second term,” Ignatius said. “This is very much a political play on his part. He does hope it will lock in Republican control, and it’s going to lead to some big legal battles.”
“If you look at the number of things that he’s trying to do now that are paused or stopped altogether by federal district courts, it’s really extraordinary, and it’s setting up … this clash between the president and what he will claim is a judiciary that’s out of control and violating his wishes,” the Washington Post columnist predicted. “He’ll press that to his followers and try to organize them against the judiciary… That’s a really scary vision of the future if this continues.”
“Well, that’s exactly what he’s doing,” Scarborough responded, telling MS NOW viewers, “He’s trying to get his followers to not blame him, not blame the Republicans, but to blame justices for doing their jobs.”
