On MS NOW's The 11th Hour, Angelo Carusone discusses Supreme Court ruling on mail-in ballots: “They lost the case, but they got to keep a lot of the doubt and damage that they've sown as a part of that process”
Carusone on right-wing election denial even after this ruling: “They are really committed, and they are dogged, and the poison that they put into the system has an is infecting a lot of people, even people that were part of the solution in 2020”
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From the September 14, 2026, edition of MS NOW's The 11th Hour with Ari Velshi
ALI VELSHI (HOST): Donald Trump doesn't back off from anything, generally speaking. I mean, he does change his mind from time to time, but he is very committed to disruption of the elections, so it seems. This was but one tool. It was a big one, and it seems to be gone for now. But there's always a warning here that he might be up to something else.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah. I mean, the larger project isn't defeated, and that's not something we should lose sight of. These individual victories are an important sort of bulwark against, as you note, a larger, multi-pronged assault against elections. And so in this case, they were defeated. They lost the case, but they got to keep a lot of the doubt and damage that they've sown as a part of that process. And as you note, this is a multi-pronged effort because this decision came down this week.
But there's another side to this coin, which is that a lot of this USPS stuff was designed to sort of force states to turn over voter rolls. That's really what this was about. But there is still a database case before the Supreme Court, which is a database that the federal government sort of retooled, merged with a bunch of Social Security data, already claimed to have run against voter rolls that they had access to, and said they found 26,000 people that potentially should not have been allowed to vote that are on the rolls.
And so that's another mechanism by which they're going to use to sow more doubt, push things through. It's still a case pending, and I could list several other prongs, as you noted, in this larger, multi-pronged assault against elections. So this is a big thing. We shouldn't lose sight of it. But we also have to remind ourselves that this is part of a comprehensive project and by no means is Trump going to be chastened by this. And that's the key that we should keep in mind.
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VELSHI: You and I have talked about this many times about the many ways in which Donald Trump could behave, with the election. Some of it might be at the last minute. Some of it might be, a false flag or some reason to bring out troops or claim voting machines. Some of it might be, as Judge Luttig said, not seating elected members of Congress on January 3. There's lots more in this book. We're not even in the in the first chapter of it. That said, are you heartened by this victory?
CARUSONE: No. I'm — yes, it's a good thing. It — you know, it's — I'm not disappointed. That's the way I would describe it. Right?
That there are some basic expectations that we have, and this was expected from my perspective. It's a bare minimum. So I'm not disappointed. And — but I'm careful to say that I'm heartened because I think about it from two perspectives. If this was normal order and we were just trying to judge this from the mechanisms of the institutions at play, then I, of course, would be heartened. Like, okay. I'm going to assured here.
But the reality is that this is not about winning in court. That's only a small part of it. They don't care. This is about winning an argument, a narrative. And it's kind of like planting bamboo or, like, mint in your garden. Right? It it doesn't matter what you do once you plant it. It's there, and it's going to spread.
And that's what happens, is that what they have here is something even when they lose in court, they will be able to point to this very thing and say, see, we told you all the cheating. We tried to stop it. And it — and now we have all this cheating because the courts didn't let us do the things. We didn't check the votes. Right? That's what's going to end up playing out.
So in the short term, yes, I am heartened that the institution didn't the worst possible thing they could have done. But, I am but I'm not reassured about the effect this has on the larger landscape. And it's hard to sort of disassociate those two things because we can't lose sight of the fights in front of us.
It's amazing that these places have been fighting back and that the institutions held in that way, but we have a long road ahead of us. And I and I want to sort of gird myself for a marathon as opposed to a sprint.
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VELSHI: Angelo, it's kind of interesting because January 6, the reason we all know about Judge Luttig is because he sent a message to, at vice president Pence's request, because Trump pressuring Pence to to not certify the elections. He was pretty clear. He said, Luttig told Pence, you got no role in this. You're — you count the ballots. This is Congress's role.
They didn't learn that lesson after January 6. They're no they don't seem any closer to learning that now. The executive and the president have no role in determining elections or their outcomes.
CARUSONE: Yeah. And I would just note that that, in fact, they've learned the wrong lesson. Because after January 6, by and large, most people in the country, including Republicans, thought what happened there was really bad. And that's not the case anymore. Right?
They actually think that it was okay now, that something was lost. They they should have pushed harder and fought longer. And that's the part that concerns me is that over the arc of time, it's changed. I think back to what happened after the the elections recently in California.
I mean, mean, the the LA mayor race took place, and the vice president of The United States said that it was stolen, and it wasn't a big deal at all. I mean, it just wasn't even considered controversial that he got out there and said the LA mayor's race was stolen. It was just another remark. I mean, that's because it's so deeply baked in. Ken Cuccinelli, who now runs the election transparency initiative, he was a player in protecting the integrity of the elections in 2020.
He was a player in actually doing his job when he was in the DHS, and now he is out there saying, it was never really about the post office. It's always been about getting those voter rolls, and we're going to continue to push as much as we can to get them. So it is so much a part of the firmament of conservative and right-wing thinking, and this is where I sort of sound like two things at the same time. I'm so grateful for the work that Eliza's group does and and the work that it's so essential. I can't diminish it. It is important to remind ourselves constantly that the foundation we are standing on is holding, that voting is should be trusted and believed in, and that these things are small examples and small spotlights of it working. But on the other hand, we can't lose sight of the one fact that you noted, that they are really committed, and they are dogged, and the poison that they put into the system has an is infecting a lot of people, even people that were part of the solution in 2020. And that's the thing that we just can't ever really forget, especially as we get closer to these touchstone moments.