In a post-midnight interview aired early on August 11, 2026, Real America's Voice host Wayne Allyn Root urged Trump to declare a “national security emergency for elections” that would let him impose proof-of-citizenship, photo-ID, and mail-in-voting rules nationwide without Congress, if the Senate cannot pass the SAVE Act. Trump did not endorse the idea, but he did not reject it either. His reply: “Let me just say that stranger things have happened, OK? I'll leave it at that.”
The pitch was not fringe noise. It echoed a recent gathering of election-denial figures, some of whom worked to overturn the 2020 result, who have pressed the same theory. Legal scholars are clear that no such presidential authority exists: the Constitution assigns the running of elections to the states and to Congress, and there is no “election emergency” power that lets a president rewrite voting rules by decree.
What is documented here is a non-denial. Asked directly whether he would seize control of the midterm rules through an emergency declaration, the president who has spent years insisting elections are rigged answered that stranger things have happened. It is a statement, not an action, but coming from a sitting president three months before a midterm, it is worth recording.
Update (October 1, 2026): asked again five weeks before the election, he again declined to rule it out, and raised the Insurrection Act himself. In his September 28 interview with TIME, asked whether he would rule out declaring a state of emergency before the midterms absent widespread violence: “I don't rule anything out or in. We'll see. You mean the Insurrection Act?” When the reporter said yes: “No, I've never used it. I could use it. A lot of people think I should use it sometimes.” Asked whether he plans to send ICE agents to polling places: “Haven't thought of it.” He has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act before, in Los Angeles, Portland and Minneapolis, but has not done so, The Hill noted.
Correction (October 5, 2026): This entry previously dated the interview to around August 10. HuffPost and Democracy Docket both report that Trump made the remark on Tuesday, August 11, in an interview that aired after midnight, and the date has been corrected.