Even Lara Trump Can’t Explain Trump’s New Ballot Conspiracy Theory

Donald Trump keeps repeating lies about election fraud, and on Tuesday morning, CNN’s Kasie Hunt called out his daughter-in-law about it.

Hunt brought up a Truth Social post Donald Trump made on Sunday where he said that 20 percent of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania are fraudulent, claimed Democrats are cheating, and called for an investigation. The CNN presenter asked Lara Trump, a co-chair of the Republican National Committee, why the former president was saying this if he wanted more votes.

“He’s specifically referencing information from the 2020 election,” she replied, though that’s not actually clear in the Truth Social Post. “What we’re talking about right now is making sure that every vote matters and every vote counts.”

Hunt followed up, asking for evidence of fraudulent mail-in ballots in the 2020 Pennsylvania election.

“I didn’t see that report, so I’d have to go back and look at it,” Trump replied. “I can’t directly speak to that.”

Trump spent the interview trying to spin her father-in-law’s words by claiming he wants every voter in the U.S. to vote how they are most comfortable, whether that’s by mail-in ballot or in person. But this contradicts a lot of what the Republican presidential nominee has said and continues to say about the electoral process.

The former president’s conspiracies about fraudulent ballots recently convinced Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin to insist on paper ballots in his state and his supporters in Georgia to change state election laws to help him. Meanwhile, he’s pressuring Republicans in the House to attach his “voter fraud” measures into a critical spending bill—thus changing voting laws just weeks before the election.

Trump has a long history of casting doubt on the electoral process, from his repeated claims about a rigged election to his refusal to accept the 2020 results and subsequent attempt to overturn them, and his preemptive efforts to discredit November’s results if they go against him. On Tuesday, Hunt exposed how Trump’s closest advisers enable this behavior even when they can’t explain it themselves.

The rules of the presidential debate are apparently still being hashed out just hours before the first matchup between Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican candidate Donald Trump.

During an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, Harris’s communications director Michael Tyler accused Trump of being “muzzled” by his campaign over the controversial decision to mute his microphone during Harris’s responses—a call that some critics have derided as the political equivalent of bowling lane “bumper guards.”

Skirting a question about Harris’s spontaneous burst onto the 2024 campaign trail, Tyler sidestepped to jab Trump and the former president’s inability to control himself on the debate stage.

“Yeah, listen, I think, well, it remains to be seen what Donald Trump says, obviously his team decided to overrule him and has muzzled him somewhat on the debate stage,” Tyler said. “But I think regardless of which version of Donald Trump actually shows up on the debate stage, it is an opportunity for the vice president, right? To communicate her vision for where she wants to take this country.”

Tyler’s media hit clearly got to the former president, who took to Truth Social to vent his frustrations about Harris’s publicist.

“Why does FoxNews keep putting on, for endless periods of time, Michael Tyler, Kamala’s publicist, who spews nothing but lies—like Project 2025, etc,” Trump fumed. “Fox tries to be so politically correct, when the other side plays for keeps. RIDICULOUS!!!”

Donald Trump is once again trying to steer the Republican Party from the backseat.

On Tuesday, the Republican presidential nominee decided to plant himself in the middle of the debate over funding the government, making it that much harder for House Speaker Mike Johnson to rally his caucus behind a six-month continuing resolution to avert a shutdown in three weeks. At the crux of the issue is the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility—or SAVE—Act, a piece of legislation that would require proof of citizenship in order to vote.

“If Republicans in the House, and Senate, don’t get absolute assurances on Election Security, THEY SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Tuesday afternoon. “THE DEMOCRATS ARE TRYING TO ‘STUFF’ VOTER REGISTRATIONS WITH ILLEGAL ALIENS. DON’T LET IT HAPPEN—CLOSE IT DOWN!!!”

Trump regularly (and baselessly) insists that Democrats are letting undocumented immigrants vote in an attempt to rig the election. This latest claim comes as he struggles to attract new voters, while his presidential opponent Kamala Harris has seen a steady rise in the polls.

It is, of course, already illegal and impossible for non-citizens to vote in U.S. elections. But adding a proof of citizenship requirement to the stopgap funding measure would restrict voter access in less resourced regions of the country, and add another barrier to fulfilling the quintessential American ideal of a free and fair democracy.

Johnson, meanwhile, is already on the verge of losing the funding measure: currently, the conservative leader is facing six “no” votes, while he can only afford to lose the votes of four House Republicans.

But it’s not the first time that Trump has tried to seed division in the American legislative system from the campaign trail. Earlier this year, the former president had a heavy hand in coercing Republicans to tank a bipartisan border deal so that he could overinflate concerns about immigration and run on the issue.

A judge dismissed a lawsuit Tuesday from a member of the Fulton County, Georgia, elections board who refused to certify the results of the state’s primary election.

In May, board official Julie Adams launched a lawsuit against the county, arguing that she could not certify the results of the primary election without having access to all information about the voting procedures. Elections Board director Nadine Williams had barred her from seeing some information.

Adams also sought a court ruling on whether her duty to certify election results is “discretionary, not ministerial, in nature,” according to the suit.

Judge Robert C.I. McBurney dismissed the case without prejudice, meaning that Georgia election officials will continue to have a mandatory duty to certify the election results, scrambling Adams’s attempt to upend years of precedent and Georgia state law.

An amendment to Georgia’s state constitution allows for plaintiffs to seek declaratory relief from the government, which could determine Adams’s obligations in her role as an election superintendent. However, the law required that any complaint seeking relief must be brought against the state or local government only, and no other forms of relief can be included in the complaint.

“Failure to comply with either requirement is fatal: the non-compliant complaint ‘shall be dismissed,’” McBurney wrote in his order.

Adams’s first complaint in May was brought against the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections, as well as Williams. According to the judge, “Neither is a proper party for such a suit.” The complaint also requested injunctive relief, which would prohibit Williams from denying Adams access to election materials and processes.

In July, the defendants argued a motion to dismiss using this argument, and Adams amended her original complaint, bringing her case solely against Fulton County. “That was too little, too late; the fatal pleading flaw cannot be undone,” wrote the judge.

Adams, a staunch election denier, was backed by the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank.

McBurney made clear that Adams can refile her claim, this time listing the proper party, and that if she “moves with alacrity,” her claim “can be considered alongside” a challenge to the Georgia election board’s new rule requiring a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying election results. The rule, which was passed in August, would make it significantly easier for county election officials to delay or refuse certification of election results in populous Democratic strongholds such as Fulton or DeKalb counties in November.

At Tuesday’s night’s presidential debate, Kamala Harris is sure to get under Donald Trump’s skin. But just to be extra sure, she’s bringing two of his old administration staffers along.

Former Trump White House director of communications Anthony Scaramucci and former Trump national security official Olivia Troye will be attending the debate in Philadelphia as guests and surrogates of the vice president. Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung quickly tried to dismiss the news.

“Nobody is going to listen to someone who was a low-level staffer who didn’t even work for President Trump and someone who barely lasted more time than an expired ham sandwich as White House communications director,” Cheung said in a statement, referring to Scaramucci’s infamously short 10-day tenure.

Scaramucci has not held back on criticizing Trump and his campaign, warning about the repercussions of another Trump presidency and even offering predictions on how long J.D. Vance would last as Trump’s running mate. Troye has called out Trump’s mental fitness, alluding to multiple worrying instances during his time in office, and made a speech at the Democratic National Convention calling for her fellow Republicans to reject Trump and support democracy.

In 2016, Trump brought Bill Clinton sexual harassment accusers Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, and Juanita Broaddrick to one of his debates with Hillary Clinton in an attempt to abuse and humiliate his opponent. Harris’s aim appears to be different: to show viewers that people who used to work for Trump now see the dangers of him returning to office. Bringing Troye and Scaramucci also offers the side benefit of getting Trump rattled.

The debate promises to be an interesting contest, especially since Trump has tried to get out of it and his campaign has argued over the rules, trying to keep microphones muted when it isn’t Trump or Harris’s turn to speak. The Trump campaign seems to be worried that the former president and convicted felon won’t be able to keep himself from interrupting or resorting to petty insults, and Harris’s campaign wants him to be able to hurt his own cause. Having guests at the debate who Trump can’t stand may allow Harris to get inside his head.