Last week, during an Oval Office interview with Reuters, Donald Trump touted his accomplishments and suggested that they were so great that “we shouldn’t even have an election” in November. Not surprisingly, that comment made headlines.

But it is at best a distraction from the real threat: the United States will have elections this year, but they will not be free and fair.

Far more important than his musings about calling off the midterms was what the president told the New York Times in another Oval Office interview. As the Times noted, he said that “he regretted not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in swing states after his loss in the 2020 election.”

Talking about the capacity of the national guard to execute that plan, he explained: “I don’t know that they are sophisticated enough … I’m not sure that they’re sophisticated enough in the ways of crooked Democrats, and the way they cheat, to figure that out.”

As the Times observed, “Mr. Trump’s expression of regret … was ... a warning sign that he had not given up on the idea that voting machines were dangerous or that they could be seized in an effort to curb fraud.” We should take that warning seriously.

So far, the leaders of the Democratic party have not. They have focused on mobilizing to compete successfully in November, but have done little to ensure the election is not rigged through executive action, intimidation or interference with vote counting.

In a 16 January podcast interview, Robert Kagan, a historian and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, explained why this is a mistake. Because of Donald Trump’s desire and need for complete domination, he cannot tolerate and will not allow a........

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