Jeffrey Goldberg: President Trump's obsession with elections, elections he's won an election he lost but claimed to have won, elections he's afraid Republicans may lose, is well-documented.

There's a great deal of worry among election officials across the country that Trump will use whatever tools he has at his disposal, including most alarmingly America's intelligence services, to create doubt and confusion around the upcoming midterms.

Joining me tonight to discuss this and more, Jonathan Karl, the Chief Washington correspondent at ABC News and author of Retribution, Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America, Liz Landers is the White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour, Jonathan Lemire is a staff writer at The Atlantic and a co-host of Morning Joe on MS NOW, and Michael Scherer is a staff writer and a White House correspondent at the Atlantic.

Thank you all for joining me.

Let's talk about this word nationalize.

There's a lot of stuff to unpack here.

What -- Jon, what does it mean to nationalize an election?

Jonathan Karl, Washington Bureau Chief, ABC NEWS: Well, I think for Trump it means to go in there and run the elections and states and localities that he's lost.

I mean, there isn't a great, grand strategy here, but he's talking about some sense of a federal takeover of the way the elections are run, and, again, primarily, exclusively focusing on places that he lost in 2020.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

Let's listen to what Trump told former deputy director of the FBI and current podcaster, Dan Bongino, this week about this issue.

Donald Trump, U.S.

President: The Republicans should say, we want to take over, we should take over the voting in at least many, 15 places.

The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.

And then we have states that are so crooked and they're counting votes.

We have states that I won that show I didn't win.

Jeffrey Goldberg: So, here's a trivia question for all you political nerds.

What does Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution say about this issue?

Please feel free to hit your buzzer at any time.

Michael, yes?

Michael Scherer, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: It says states run elections.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Ah, interesting.

Michael Scherer: So -- and, you know, President Trump came in.

He issued a bunch of executive orders.

He tried to get rid of mail voting, he tried to change voting machine technology.

He tried to impose voter I.D.

Almost all of that has been thrown out by the courts.

There's some still pending, but it's not going anywhere.

The courts can read the Constitution, even if the president can't.

He can't get very far there.

Now, what we've seen in the last couple weeks, though, is something else.

He's using the full powers of the federal government, the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and other people in the Justice Department to suck up information to try and confirm the debunked theories he has about the 2020 election, the 2022 election, in the hopes that he might find a spark in all the smoke that's been created by his allies.

And that's a separate program that's been going forward.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Jon, I don't want to get all schoolhouse rock here, except that I actually do, but why is it that the state, why is it the founders, the framers of the Constitution, thought it was important to devolve election supervision to local authority?

Jonathan Lemire, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: Well, in part, to prevent exactly this from someone -- from a president or some sort of ruler to try to rig the system, that the authority should be in the states.

That's the United States of America.

That's right at the beginning of a set like that.

And I think there's other interviews where the president has given about this, where he's singled -- he's highlighted Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta.

What are those?

Those are big, blue cities where, frankly, majority minority cities, cities that he lost and he knows where Democrats will do well again.

And Tulsi Gabbard heads there, you know, as DNI suggesting that there some sort of foreign interference in American elections.

She made a separate trip to Puerto Rico, her team did, looking for it there as well.

And this is President Trump, not just trying to re-litigate 2020, but Democrats are afraid this is about 2026, 2028.

So, in confusion with the voter rolls and while also perhaps putting even ICE agents on the streets.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I want to come back to the extraordinary image of a director of National Intelligence being involved in a law enforcement activity in Georgia and also Puerto Rico.

Obviously, I want to come back to that in a minute, but I want to stay on this question of how it would even work in Trump's conception.

What would it -- it would literally mean federal officials moving into local election boards and supplanting those people?

Like, Liz, what would he do in order to create this, what he would think of as a fair election, meaning one that he would be guaranteed of winning?

Liz Landers, White House Correspondent, PBS News Hour: Well, the White House was asked about this several times this week, and Karoline Leavitt said that what the president actually meant was that he was supporting the SAVE Act, which is now a bill that may get a vote in Congress soon.

And this is something that the Republicans are pushing for and it has some pretty major changes to voting in this country, including voter I.D.

would be required.

There're some changes to some of the other parts of what makes every state vote differently across the country.

But the president himself, though, continued to double down on his own statement about nationalizing the election even after she said that's not really what he meant.

He said in the Oval Office later on this week, after the Bongino interview, he said, a state is an agent for the federal government and elections.

I don't know why the federal government doesn't do them anyways.

So -- Jeffrey Goldberg: Say that again.

A state is an agent of the federal -- Liz Landers: A state is an agent for the federal government in election.

So, I think that he does want to see -- Jeffrey Goldberg: You know who never thought that?

James Madison, or Hamilton, or really anybody, yes.

Jonathan Karl: I mean, look, the Constitution does say that Congress couldn't have a role.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes.

Jonathan Karl: What -- the person that doesn't have a role is the chief executive, is the president.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right, the last person to have a role, the last entity that would have a legitimate role is the -- Jonathan Karl: So, the SAVE Act requires rather onerously a proof of not just a photo I.D., proof of citizenship, and you must do every time you interact with with your registration, when you're changing your address, when you're moving, any of that stuff.

But, look, what, what he wants is he wants to do away with mail-in voting and he wants Republicans to be basically in charge of administering elections.

Not the federal government, he wants Republicans to be in charge.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

So, he's actually in his statements, he's been using two different - - he's like, I want Republicans in charge and I want it nationalized.

And in his mind, they're interchangeable.

Liz, I want to just play an interesting exchange that you had with Karoline Leavitt, the White House spokeswoman, the other day on election questions.

Let's listen to this.

Liz Landers: Steve Bannon recently said, quote, we're going to have ICE surround the polls come November.

Is that something that the president is considering?

Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary: That's not something I've ever heard the president consider, no.

Liz Landers: Can you guarantee to the American public that ICE will not be around polling locations or voting locations in November?

Karoline Leavitt: I can't guarantee that, an ice agent won't be around a polling location in November.

I mean, that's frankly a very silly, hypothetical question.

But what I can tell you is I haven't heard the president discuss any formal plans to put ICE outside of polling locations.

It's a disingenuous question.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Silly and disingenuous.

I think we would agree that that's a pretty good question.

What was your reaction to that to that answer?

It didn't make it sound like ICE is not going to be deployed.

Liz Landers: Right.

I think that that's the takeaway there.

Look, it's not legal to have federal law enforcement agents outside of poll locations.

We have laws and states have individual laws about this as well, how far you can be from a polling and voting location.

But we've seen that this administration over and over has tested the bounds of the law, on immigration, on a number of issues.

So, I asked for this because Steve Bannon is an ally of the president, a former adviser to him.

He has a very large microphone.

And for him to be talking about this and sort of putting this into the ether, I thought it was important to sort of get it on the record with the White House, whether or not they're talking about this.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Can I -- yes, go ahead.

Jonathan Karl: But, look, there's a context here, which is the Republicans fear major losses coming in the midterm elections.

They've had a series of setbacks.

You had the November losses in New Jersey and in Virginia.

You had the loss in Miami.

You also had just over the weekend a loss in a state race, state house race, in Texas, where a district that had gone overwhelmingly for Trump was suddenly won by Democrats.

The fear is that we're looking at a real blue wave for these midterm elections.

That's the context here.

I think that part of this is trying to intimidate Democratic voters.

And part of it is laying the groundwork to challenge the election results from midterm.

Jeffrey Goldberg: You -- go ahead there.

Michael Scherer: There's also real tension over this in the White House.

I mean, I was told this week that after the president came out with those statements, his senior advisers were saying, no, nationalizing is not -- these are people who are working on the investigation in Fulton, you know, working on the other -- Jeffrey Goldberg: The Georgia case.

Michael Scherer: Yes, the Georgia case, who support what Tulsi Gabbard's doing, but nationalizing is not the route to do this.

I think they're going to let him continue to do what he has done now for, you know, ten years, which is to raise doubts about anything that doesn't go his way and claim fraud and mistakes.

But they also know, his own advisers know that, you know, by -- if you remember back in 2020, there were two Senate seats in Georgia that were lost in a runoff because the president said, don't trust this vote, I won in Georgia, the voting lies.

And what that meant was Democrats turned out and voted in the runoff and Republicans did not turn out and voted in the runoff.

So, there are also Republican consultants who are very concerned about this.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

Let me ask all of you cover the White House.

I'm interested in the way Bannon is used as a -- well, is he used to float test balloons or is it less coordinated than that?

Does he put that out in coordination with the president or does it just happen organically?

Michael Scherer: I think there's communication, but I think there is a set of troublemakers that the president likes to talk to.

I mean, we know a lot more names than just Bannon, who -- Jeffrey Goldberg: You mean like the Laura Loomer-type person?

Michael Scherer: Laura Loomer, yes, and other people, activists in the party, people who -- you know, conspiracists around election stuff he talks to, but they are not part of the internal government process.

Jonathan Lemire: But there are times where the president will reach out to Steve Bannon and take his advice on things.

And Bannon -- and sometimes the coordination often is just Bannon getting -- going first, but sometimes the president gets there because Bannon has sort of planted the seeds.

And on this one, it's not just ICE agents.

He's even suggesting the Insurrection Act should be called in November.

Michael Scherer: And 101st Airborne.

He wants to send the 101st Airborne to polling places.

He said that this week.

Jeffrey Goldberg: That's your question next week, I guess.

Liz Landers: Right.

Jonathan Karl: But what I have to -- some of the craziest stuff on this is on Donald Trump's Truth Social feed.

It's not even from Steve Bannon or any of conspiracy theorists.

I mean, as he is sending Tulsi Gabbard, his director of National Intelligence, to Fulton County, we also see on his Truth Social feed, he is posting one of the wackiest conspiracy theories that I ever encountered about 2020, which is that Italian spy satellites were used to flip -- to hack into voting machines to flip votes.

And it even added new elements to this -- it's an old theory.

It goes back -- I wrote about it like five years ago.

But the new elements of these -- of the theory is that the Chinese funded it, the CIA computer, big central computer was about it, and the FBI covered it up.

This is on the president of the United States' social media platform.

Jonathan Lemire: The vice president of Italy right now is getting to the bottom of it.

Jonathan Karl: At the very time -- Jeffrey Goldberg: How many satellites does Italy have anyway?

I mean, we spent a lot of time talking about Italian satellite technologies.

Jonathan Karl: What I learned in reporting on the last time we dealt with his 2020 stuff is that he asked his DNI at the time, who was John Ratcliffe, the current CIA director, to use the power of the DNI to look into this stuff.

And Ratcliffe had to quietly explain to him that, you know, we don't do domestic law enforcement.