Transcript: Trump Blurts Out Plot to Rig Midterms as Polls Turn Brutal

As Trump reveals new levels of corruption to the GOP scheme to gerrymander the midterms, a writer on voting rights explains why Democrats must develop an aggressive long-term response.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 11 episode of The Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

After the Virginia Supreme Court struck down a new redistricting that gave Democrats additional House seats, Donald Trump celebrated the outcome. In so doing, however, he accidentally revealed that he and Republicans expressly reserve the right for themselves to play by their own rules and rig elections in their own favor unilaterally. In truth, the only chance Trump and Republicans have of salvaging the midterms is extreme cheating, as a remarkable new poll shows. But what are friends of democracy supposed to do in a world where one party is openly rigging the game and the other isn’t? Where are these gerrymandering wars really headed?

We’re talking this over with Ari Berman of Mother Jones, the great reporter on voting rights. Ari, good to have you on.

Ari Berman: Hey, Greg. Great to talk to you. Thank you.

Sargent: So in Virginia, Democrats had succeeded in passing a redistricting referendum that added an additional four congressional seats to the Democratic column. The state Supreme Court struck that down. But instead of talking about the ruling, which is unfortunate, let’s look forward. Ari, Democrats will probably still win one or two of those four seats in Virginia. Meanwhile, Republicans are redistricting in several southern states where they might get, I don’t know, five seats extra. What’s the overall math right now? Can you just boil it down in really simple terms?

I would say Republicans are probably going to net about five seats from redistricting at the end of the day—possibly more, maybe less—but they’re ahead right now in the gerrymandering arms race because of what the state Supreme Court in Virginia did and because of what the U.S. Supreme Court did last week.

Sargent: What looked like a wash is going to be a small Republican advantage. Five seats—that’s unfair, it shouldn’t have happened, but that’s surmountable for Democrats, right?

Berman: Yeah. I mean, in a wave election, it’s definitely—it just gives them less margin for error in terms of the map. I mean, they are going to lose one or two seats in Virginia. The map is going to be more difficult for them in Florida because of the new gerrymander—not insurmountable, but more difficult. And then in some of these southern states, these districts that they’ve had for decades in certain places, like Tennessee, for example, where they broke up Memphis—those are no longer going to exist. So they’re going to have to put Republicans on defense in some new places and they’re going to have to expand the map.

Sargent: Let’s talk about what Donald Trump tweeted about the Virginia ruling. He said this:

“Huge win for the Republican Party and America in Virginia. The Virginia Supreme Court has just struck down the Democrats’ horrible gerrymander. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”

Ari, Donald Trump has literally commanded numerous Republican states to gerrymander to the maximum extent possible. He’s sponsored many primary challengers to Republicans who refuse to go along with that. And here he is celebrating the fact that Republicans get to gerrymander and Democrats don’t. His explicit position is that elections should be rigged in the GOP’s favor. Your thoughts on that?

Berman: Yeah, I mean, Trump was just celebrating all this week the fact that he ousted all of these Republicans in Indiana who were opposed to gerrymandering. So it’s very clear that under Trump, the Republicans are an openly pro-gerrymandering party. He’s been pushing maximum gerrymandering everywhere in really unprecedented ways.

I think what the Virginia Supreme Court ruling showed and why it made people so angry is it feels like there’s two sets of rules. It feels like Republicans are passing all of these gerrymandered maps that, A, are not approved by voters, and B, are then upheld in court. And Democrats introduce a map that is approved by voters and then is struck down in court.

So it’s a total double standard. Democrats already have to face a higher bar in places like Virginia and California because voters have to approve their maps. And then even when they’re approved, in the case of Virginia, you have courts retroactively throwing out millions of votes in a way that they have not done so far in places like Texas.

Sargent: I want to underscore the double standard here a little further. Democrats in numerous states now have gone to the voters and put the referendum before them on whether they want to redraw maps in the middle of the decade. That is a hard thing to do, but they respected the voters enough to go ahead and do........

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