A lawyer who once worked inside Donald Trump’s White House says the president intends to “steal” November’s midterm elections wherever he can manage it.
Ty Cobb, who served in the Trump administration from July 2017 to May 2018 and managed the White House’s internal legal team during Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation, made the prediction during a television appearance discussing an unusual midterm convention Trump has ordered to be held next week in Dallas, Texas.
The Republican National Committee, which is hosting the event, has recommended Republican candidates pay $25,000 a head to attend, and many Republican lawmakers have said they will not go.
On Thursday’s episode of The Beat on MS NOW, host Ari Melber, who aired a clip of a former Republican governor saying he had never heard of such a convention, asked Cobb why so many in the president’s own party were staying away.
“Well, I think the Republicans who are saying no are being strategic,” Cobb replied. “This is a president whose approval ratings are in the tank. And they’re doing the best they can to distance themselves from him, not aggressively and certainly not directly, but to the extent that they can get their constituents to focus on their records, not the president’s record.”
Cobb then turned to Trump’s $400 million campaign war chest, which the president has so far declined to spend on this year’s midterm races.
“But at the same time, he’s sitting on $400 million in campaign money that he could donate to some of these elections. And he’s not,” Cobb said. “The thinking is that he would rather keep it for his presidential library or other personal interests. But it also plays into a narrative that I think people are undervaluing, which is I think Trump doesn’t feel he needs to spend this money because it is his intention to interfere with the elections and to steal these elections where possible.”
Cobb also raised the possibility that House Speaker Mike Johnson could refuse to swear in Democratic candidates who win their elections.
His warning came the same day the Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to lift a lower court order blocking its plan to restrict mail-in ballots, under which the U.S. Postal Service could refuse to deliver ballots in states that have not submitted voter lists to a federal database that does not yet exist. The plan would also require states to use a uniform envelope style.
In a separate appearance on CNN earlier this week, Cobb, 76, lamented other changes to the White House under Trump, including the demolition of the East Wing to build a ballroom, a project the Supreme Court allowed to continue.
Anchor Erin Burnett read aloud part of Chief Justice John Roberts’ dissent, which called the White House “an iconic American building whose symbolism and history are wrapped up in its architecture,” and asked Cobb whether that struck him as more than a legal argument.
He likened the Executive Mansion to a “whorehouse.”
“Yeah, very much so. I mean, it certainly touched me because, as somebody who had spent a lot of time in the White House and in or about the grounds... It was a beautiful setting and a historic setting,” Cobb said.
“It’s turning into, you know, some combination of a w---ehouse and Las Vegas at this stage of the game with all the gold and paving of it. So, it’s tragic what’s going on. But sadly, it’s going to continue, at least for the time being.”
