On Deadline White House, Angelo Carusone discusses the emerging MAGA media plan to use the DNI office to subvert elections: “They're signaling all of what they're planning to do”
Carusone: “There's an intense synergy here where the storytelling, the media apparatus is beginning to sync up with these government entities. Something that was podcasting is now operating under a presidential seal, and that's it.”
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From the July 3, 2026, edition of MS NOW's Deadline: White House
AYMAN MOHYELDIN (GUEST HOST): Donald Trump's desperation to silence voters and their deeply unpopular views of his presidency has hit an alarming and dangerous new low, with a new report about how Trump's MAGA media allies appear to be laying the groundwork for Trump to take control of this fall's midterm elections. Media Matters writes this, quote, "Right wing media figures such as Steve Bannon, John Solomon, and Cleta Mitchell appear to be weaving together a narrative about interference by China in U.S. elections to justify a national emergency to curtail voting rights." Here's an alarming sample of that. Watch.
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STEVE BANNON: If they can't cheat, they can't win. Correct? You agree with that?
RUDY GIULIANI: 100%.
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BANNON: The reason he ain't there and Pulte is to get to the bottom of the 2020 stolen election.
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WAYNE ALLYN ROOT: Stop talking about the SAVE Act and do a national security emergency for elections.
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BANNON:
But also Pulte, this is why they're trying to stop him at DNI. Why the firestorm to stop him and to shut down Solomon? Because if you want to have an executive order that could withstand a immediate court challenge and be overturned, you have to lay out a pretty definitive predicate for that.
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MOHYELDIN: And you heard the name there a few times, Bill Pulte, suggesting that Trump's newly installed acting DNI is heavily involved in this plan. Media Matters writes this, quote, "The main players here come not only from the fever swamp backwaters of MAGA media, but also from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the White House." I want to bring in Media Matters for America president Angelo Carusone. And with me here at the table, former attorney for the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, James Sample. He is currently a law professor at Hofstra University.
Angelo, I'll start with you. What more can you tell us about the details of this plan and how MAGA media is laying the groundwork for it just by having the discourse about it?
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah. And, look, I mean, we should also keep in mind here that it's not you know, the people that were outside trying to overturn the 2020 election are now inside the administration actively helping to disrupt and sort of force. So a lot of this is through a lens of not just what they're saying on the outside, but how it's working in tandem with these official positions. So people on the outside are now running a task force. As you noted, Bill Pulte, who's now the DNI, and the storytellers have kind of signaled what he's there to do, which is to help sort of be part of this sort of three part sequence.
One is to manufacture a predicate, sort of create the evidence. They're not going to try to find it. They're going to manufacture something. Then the thing that they seem to be centering around is this idea that China interfered in the 2020 election, and they're going to sort of uncover, by declassifying a whole bunch of what is supposed intelligence that reinforces and improves that. So that's the first thing, manufacture the predicate.
The second then would be to use that to declare a national emergency. And then the third part of it is to impose by decree what they haven't been able to get passed legislatively or what has been sort of pushed back in the course to these with these executive orders. So that is parts of the SAVE Act and to try to, you know, further support and disrupt the election. And then that's it. And they are echoing it on the outside.
They're signaling all of what they're planning to do, and they're beginning to move the machinery into official parts of government to actually execute it.
MOHYELDIN: James, I mean, whether this potential plot is successful or not is almost kinda beyond the point because this is a person in Donald Trump and many of the people around him who are election deniers. They tried to overturn an election once, and now it seems they're laying the groundwork for more of the same. How seriously should we be taking this kind of talk, or should we just be dismissing it as nothing more than, media fodder?
JAMES SAMPLE (GUEST): Put it this way, Jack Smith is not someone prone to hyperbole. And exactly24r hours and 10 minutes ago on this program, on this station, he told Nicole Wallace that he is very concerned about the midterm elections and the integrity of those elections, not because of external threats, but because the internal apparatus of our government is actually, as Angelo just said, participating in laying the predicate for creating those fears. And I want to be very clear about one legal aspect of this, Ayman, which is to say, just saying that there's an emergency is not some talismanic thing that you can waive that invokes all sorts of other powers. There are emergency powers and statutes that grant emergency powers, but they are specific statutes. So there's a national emergencies act. It does not mention elections.
There's IEPA. That's the statute that Donald Trump tried to use to impose the global tariffs. And when the court, the Supreme Court considered that, it noted the word tariffs isn't in there. The word tax isn't in there. Well, you know what else isn't in there?
Elections, which is to say that in order to invoke emergency powers, you need to have congressional statutory authorization. So to Angelo's point, forming the predicate, what he referred to as step one, is absolutely their plan. The step two is where they are legally flawed, even beyond getting to step three. But to your point, what they're trying to do will not be legal and will not be something that the law authorizes, but the executive can almost always outpace, outrun the courts. That's the problem.
So they can succeed in this even though even if they fail legally by creating the fear, by taking the action, and then it's almost too later
MOHYELDIN: And then the courts catch up. I mean, they have the ability to shape their reality on the ground and letting the courts play catch-up through the various proceedings.
SAMPLE: They can outrun the law and then turn around and say, well, you know, it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
MOHYELDIN: Yeah. Absolutely. Angelo, the reporting mentions that Bannon's podcast colleague, John Solomon, who NBC News reports is part of a team, gathering thousands of intel documents to give Trump an opportunity to amplify new accusations about past elections. And we're seeing this dangerously play out in a state like Georgia as well. What do we know about the relationship between the White House and the ODNI and podcasters like John Solomon?
CARUSONE: I mean, that's that's the question here. Right? Because let's keep in mind. They've been signaling what Bill Pulte is there to do, which is to get to the bottom, is to be a participant in this. What Solomon's task force is supposedly designed to do is to declassify documents, to fight to to uncover intelligence that proves that the 2020 election was stolen or manipulated by China, in particular, is what they seem to be settling on.
And some things happened in the last 24 hours at the, at the DNI where they started to fire career intelligence officials, analysts who are withholding information. Now what information are they claiming that they've been withholding? We have no idea. They haven't said anything about it. But it certainly lines up with the types of activities that Solomon is designed to get to the bottom of or help expose. The very people that would be identifying this internally who are saying, hey, there's no evidence to back this up, are the types of people that they've been purging from the DNI's office and the intelligence community in the last 24 hours. So this is part of the synergy. And the last thing I'll just note, because this is the part that I find really revealing, there was a qualified director of national intelligence that was appointed by Trump, and his nomination was ultimately withheld to get confirmed so that he could put this acting DNI in place, Bill Pulte, whose only qualification seems to be that he knows how to weaponize government offices for political purposes. And Bannon has been saying all along that he's their guy to help execute this. So that there's an intense synergy here where the storytelling, the media apparatus is beginning to sync up with these government entities.
Something that was podcasting is now operating under a presidential seal, and that's it. That's it. They're almost one and the same.
MOHYELDIN: James, let me ask you about that that is taking place. The ODNI and Bill Pulte, the acting DNI, and Donald Trump basically saying, you know what? I kinda want him to be in this acting role because he's able to kind of move fast and break things quickly without having the, you know, confirmation of a Senate process and having that teased out and having everything on the record with him. And now we're seeing the dismissal as our Vaughn Hillyard was reporting earlier, of some of these intelligence officials. And as Andrew said, we don't know why.
And so where is the law in all of this? The law is supposed to kinda safeguard and protect these institutions, protect these people, protect these processes, and we're not seeing it to your point earlier that it's just so hard to catch up.
SAMPLE: Yeah. Well, as Melissa said earlier and Vaughn said earlier on your program, legally, Bill Pulte has a lot of power as an acting DNI and not necessarily a ton of accountability. So to Angelo's point and to their point, Melissa was pointing out that because of the way the process works with DNI, he can effectively be acting for as long as they need and certainly can be acting through the midterms. But every lawyer learns one thing in their first year of law school in the constitutional law class. Angelo certainly learned this.
That is in April of 1952, Harry Truman tried to seize the steel mills. And what was his basis? Well, the Korean War and a pending strike that could have yielded a serious shortage of steel, serious national security implications. What did the court say? Justice Jackson wrote an opinion, the one of the most famous opinions for evaluating presidential exercises of power.
That there are three categories, a sliding scale. And when the president is acting inconsistently with the express will of Congress by the way, Congress has repeatedly, as you know, rejected the Save America Act. That's what they're trying to do by using emergency powers. That is where presidential power is at its lowest ebb.
So is it possible they can outrun the courts? Yes. But will it be illegal and unconstitutional in every way if they try? Yes. And so we don't want to give up hope that the courts and the people can stop that.