Jeffrey Goldberg: Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

I want to start by giving you a sense of what it's like to live in the Washington reality distortion field these days.

Among the issues facing Americans and their leaders this summer are matters of enormous domestic and international importance, including the Iran war, the Russian war against Ukraine, the future of NATO, energy prices, massive wildfires, the coming A.I.

jobs crisis, and really, really malignant lettuce.

But what are we talking about in Washington, and what are we going to talk about tonight?

Our president's obsession with alleged election corruption.

On Thursday, he spoke to the nation and claimed, without providing evidence, that our election system is in terrible danger.

He has brought the country's intelligence agencies into this campaign, and released declassified documents that he says proves his point, but don't prove it at all.

Why is he doing this, and why now?

For answers, I'll ask our panel tonight.

Anne Applebaum is a staff writer at The Atlantic, Laura Barron-Lopez is a White House reporter for MS NOW, Stephen Hayes is the editor and CEO of The Dispatch, and Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times.

Okay.

No lettuce jokes.

That was my one lettuce joke for the night.

I'm sorry.

And I know it's a very serious issue, so I won't talk about it anymore.

Laura, you get to start.

We're going to get to motive in a minute, but explain the message that President Trump was trying to transmit to the country last night.

Laura Barron-Lopez, White House Reporter, MS NOW: Well, one, President Trump, for him, this was about personal vindication.

This was about him trying to, again, just convince the public that his lie about the 2020 election being stolen is true.

That was him.

He is fixated on 2020.

Sources close to the White House have told me it's what keeps him up at night.

He wants to be talking about this.

That's one.

But the other main message is he was trying to show, with this release of declassified documents, the likes of which many, you know, intel experts and former analysts say they've never seen any release like this in their careers, the big message was, look, our elections are so insecure that, essentially, he needs to gain more control over it.

And so this is part of his larger campaign to gain as much control over American elections as possible, and he has had his agencies doing many things along the way to try to take control from states, which they have the constitutional authority to control elections to take control away from them ahead of the midterms.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

Anne, what evidence is there actually that our elections are in danger from foreign interference or from other nefarious players that Donald Trump believes exist out there?

Anne Applebaum, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: So, there's no evidence that any foreign nation has ever interfered an election in the sense that they've changed votes or affected voting machines or altered the outcome of an election.

There's no evidence at all, and actually, he didn't produce any.

I mean, there are foreign countries who try to shape the narrative, who try to intervene in our social media and try and support one candidate or another.

And, ironically, the one country that has done this rather successfully and at great length over many years wasn't mentioned by Donald Trump, and that's, of course, Russia, who went out of their way to support him.

So, you know, there's no other -- and he didn't mention them, and other than that, there isn't any evidence.

There have been, in our system, there is a series of institutions that have been created going back decades actually, that are designed to prevent foreign interference and other interference.

And, actually, the Trump administration has pretty systematically dismantled them starting with the Cyber Defense Agency, which had an election monitoring ability, and they've shut that down.

There's something called the Election Electronic Registration Information Center, a kind of non-profit that helped states manage their electoral rolls.

There's an electoral -- Election Assistance Commission, another bipartisan commission.

I mean, I could go on and on.

There are multiple things have been created to make the system safe, and, actually, the Trump administration has pulled them apart one by one.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Steve, what was the purpose of the speech casting forward?

Stephen Hayes, Editor, The Dispatch: Yes.

Well, I think you framed it the right way.

I think the speech was all about looking forward.

The speech itself wasn't the main thing last night.

It wasn't -- it was about 2020, but it wasn't really about 2020.

It was about the security of elections in the past, but it wasn't really about that.

I think it was all about what's to come, and I think it sets up what we could see from this president going forward.

If you look back at the way that President Trump has tried to intervene in elections in ways that are both, you know, uncommon, illegal, unethical, sometimes legal, he's very concerned about the outcomes in 2026.

He doesn't want to be impeached.

He believes that if Democrats take the House, they will move to impeach him quickly.

So, he's done a number of things in his past that suggest he's very open to interfering in the elections in the months to come.

Jeffrey Goldberg: People have talked about this as the opening shot in a campaign to regularize or normalize the idea that the Trump administration, even in the midterms, will come in and meddle in untoward ways with local elections.

Stephen Hayes: Yes.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Elections of Congress.

Is that something that's worth worrying about, in your mind?

Stephen Hayes: Yes, look, I mean, at this point, if you look back on what the president has done, this stuff is not hypothetical.

It's not speculative.

You look at the fact that he, you know, has tried to seize voting machines in 2020, that he threatened his own vice president, that he called the Georgia secretary of state and asked him to find votes so that he could win in Georgia, that he summoned a riot on January 6th to try to stop certification.

These are things the president has done.

They're extreme.

At this point if you think it's alarmist to worry that he's going to do something, you're wrong.

It's naive to worry to not be concerned that he won't.

Laura Barron-Lopez: And all those things are also more things he did during his first term.

This, I wouldn't call it an opening salvo because since the start of the second term, he has been doing things.

The Justice Department has been threatening local elected officials with prosecution if they feel like, oh, you allowed a non-citizen voter to stay on your voter rolls.

The DHS just followed that up with more threats today.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes.

Laura Barron-Lopez: So all along the way, also Tulsi Gabbard going to Fulton County alongside FBI agents this term to seize ballots, yes, they were about 2020, but it's all about laying the groundwork for actions they may take ahead of the midterms.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Carl, I want to talk to you about what's going on the Hill, but you're right.

It's just interesting.

It just strikes me, listening to you and listening to what you just said about Tulsi Gabbard.

The idea that the director of National Intelligence has dispatched herself to a local voting jurisdiction in Georgia is quite extraordinary, and sometimes we lose -- well, novel and unprecedented, and we lose the -- Carl Hulse, Chief Washington Correspondent, The New York Times: And that's why it came up in the hearing this week for her successor.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes.

No, I want to ask you about that hearing.

I also want to ask you, at the end of the speech, Carl, he called for Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act, what he's calling the SAVE America Act.

It doesn't seem likely that he's going to get his SAVE America Act.

A, what is it, and, B, what is the general tenor of the conversations you're hearing among Republicans on the Hill about this, this hard pivot to talking about 2020 and forward?

Carl Hulse: Well, the Save America Act has become a big priority of the president.

It would change some election rules, probably make it harder for people to register to vote and vote, require I.D., citizenship, really crack down on vote by mail, which, of course, is a huge thing in a lot of states.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Well, when you say citizenship, only citizens can vote?

Carl Hulse: You would have to prove your citizenship to register to vote.

Laura Barron-Lopez: And it can make it harder for married women whose names are different on their birth certificate.

Carl Hulse: But how that -- and how that would be sort of enforced.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

Carl Hulse: So, the -- and it's stuck in the Senate because the Democrats don't want anything to do with this and the Republicans, despite the president's regular urging them to get rid of the filibuster, John Thune does not want to get rid of the filibuster.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Over this?

Carl Hulse: Yes.

Certain -- or at all, but certainly not over this.

So, there's a lot going on.

So, today, talking to Republicans, you know, they wish the president would move on from this, right?

It's not going to happen.

It's just causing them a lot of grief.

But they were also -- really interesting to me, you know, we all know these big presidential set pieces usually come with a big, coordinated effort with the Hill, and everybody talks, and the statements to bolster.

Well, the silence was deafening except for the people who said, I talked to Lisa Murkowski.

She's like, I'm underwhelmed by this.

It was nothing new.

John Cornyn at an event said, this is all old stuff.

They weren't moved by this at all.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

Carl Hulse: So, you know, Republicans traditionally want states to run the elections.

They don't want the federal government to run the elections.

So -- and then lastly on kind of what you were talking about, so Markwayne Mullin followed up the speech today with a briefing -- Jeffrey Goldberg: The new secretary -- Carl Hulse: Homeland Security.

And we had been hearing a lot before the speech that the president was going to say more than he said last night, because you're right, he didn't say they have changed votes.

Markwayne Mullin kind of picked up where Trump left off last night today saying, we know countries have the ability to change votes, even though I'm not sure that's true, and that, you know, we might go out and arrest state elections officials who don't cooperate with us.

So, I mean, obviously -- Jeffrey Goldberg: Well, that's taking it to another level entirely.

Carl Hulse: Right, he did say it.

Now, on the other hand, Democrats are really preparing for this, because they think this is coming.

They're all organized.

They have a lot going on to get ready for this.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I want to talk about the non-political part of that, the organization that you're talking about, but I also want to ask you about the politics of it.

Watch this for a moment.

This is some Democrats talking about what's going on.

Sen.

Mark Warner (D-VA): Do you deny that Joe Biden won the 2020 election?

Sen.

Angus King (I-ME): Who won the 2020 election?

Sen.

Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY): The 2020 election.

Sen.

Mark Kelly (D-AZ): The 2020 election.

Sen.

Jon Ossoff (D-GA): Who won the 2020 election?

Jeffrey Goldberg: The point being the Democrats seem to think that there's a way to capitalize on this obsession.

Carl Hulse: Yes.

Jeffrey Goldberg: And my question to you is how much are they going to jujitsu this in a kind of way and take that obsession and turn it against -- Carl Hulse: Jon Ossoff, who you saw there at the end from Georgia, kind of expected to be a target of the speech last night and wasn't.

But he has turned this into a blockbuster for him, really kind of elevating his presence out there.

Yes, so I think they see this as a rallying cry.

You know, the more that they see the -- they can tell voters the administration's trying to take away your vote, your ability to vote, it rallies people, they think.

So, in some ways, they think it's a benefit.

But they're all -- they're seriously concerned about what might happen after the election with seating members and there's a lot.

Anne Applebaum: Because I think it's really important to think, understand that this is not just about what happens before the election.

Carl Hulse: Correct.

Anne Applebaum: Yes.

It's about creating a narrative about what will happen after.

And so the reason they're talking about non-citizens voting, even though study after study after study shows that almost no non-citizens ever vote, including Heritage Foundation studies.

The reason they're doing that is that when they get a result they don't like, they will say non-citizens voted, like we said they were going to.

So, it's a preparation.

Laura Barron-Lopez: And just to me, more important than the Democrats asking was Clayton's non-answer, was Clayton not -- was essentially refusing to say that Joe Biden won the election.

And, again, we are talking about DNI, director of National Intelligence, that's the position he would be in.

The current acting one, Bill Pulte, just like Tulsi Gabbard, he was the reason that the president went forward with releasing all of these declassified documents.

That acting director of National Intelligence, all of the sources told us at MS NOW, was one of the biggest advocates constantly in the president's ear, bringing diagrams in, telling him, we need to release these documents.

And, again, yes, it's not about 2020, ultimately.

It's about justifying any actions they may take right around November, after November, all around the election.