Trump’s Own People Don’t Want Him to Give This Speech (w/ Erin Banco)

Summary

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Bulwark Takes – July 16, 2026

Episode: Trump’s Own People Don’t Want Him to Give This Speech (w/ Erin Banco)
Host: Sam Stein
Guest: Erin Banco, National Security Reporter for Reuters
Summary Prepared By: Podcast Summarizer

Episode Overview

This episode dives into the mounting tensions and controversy as former President Donald Trump prepares a national address centered on alleged vulnerabilities in the US election infrastructure. Host Sam Stein and guest Erin Banco dissect the speech’s anticipated claims, the broader context of election security policy under Trump, and internal resistance—even within Trump’s own circle—over the wisdom of amplifying doubts about American democracy. The discussion explores the real risks, the political motives, and the possible consequences for voter confidence.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Backdrop: Why This Speech, Why Now?

• Trump’s Anticipated Message:
  • Expect the main theme: “Our election infrastructure is unreliable. Can’t trust it.” (Erin Banco, [02:52]).
  • The speech is primed to focus on alleged foreign threats (notably China and Venezuela) and to cast doubt on voting machines.
• What Prompted This Timing?
  • The intelligence community, led by Tulsi Gabbard in Trump’s second term, has ramped up election security reviews and made moves like seizing machines in Puerto Rico and Georgia ([04:02]).
  • Internal government probes into vulnerabilities largely concluded months ago; timing suggests a deliberate holdback for political leverage, possibly to justify last-minute interventions ([04:02]–[06:11]).
  • “We were worried about … they’d wait till the very last minute to say anything and then say, well, well, it’s too late” (Banco, [04:02]).

2. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) Shakeup

• EAC’s Role:
  • A bipartisan agency overseeing election guidelines and machine certification ([06:36]).
• Trump’s Actions:
  • Trump ousted EAC leaders, effectively paralyzing the agency ([07:02]).
  • This move signals a strategy to bypass established electoral oversight: “He sort of ousted the remaining leaders of that agency, and it really did leave the agency paralyzed … they can’t really do anything at this point.” (Banco, [07:02]).
• Consequences:
  • Heightened fears that Trump might attempt federal intervention in state elections, possibly declaring a national emergency or issuing executive orders to take voting machines offline ([07:52]).

3. Political Engineering: Who’s Behind the Push?

• Key Players:
  • Stephen Miller and John Solomon are driving much of the legal and messaging work ([09:00]).
  • Banco credits Miller with: “He thinks ahead. He thinks about the law, he thinks about what we can, what they can try to achieve realistically, and how to work the system.” ([07:58]).
• The Endgame:
  • The government’s narrative aims to justify new federal powers over elections and prepare the ground for aggressive “emergency” action ([09:31]–[10:19]).
  • Stein summarizes: “They have taken steps to dismantle the federal infrastructure so that they can potentially assert themselves on the states. And then they’re going to lay the predicate for all this tonight.” ([09:00]).

4. Evidence of Foreign Interference: Parsing the Facts

• The 2021 National Intelligence Report:
  • Banco and Stein agree: No evidence any foreign power flipped votes or compromised infrastructure at scale ([13:15]).
  • The controversial “dissent” about China amounted to suspicion, not proof. “That paper and that dissent still didn’t say … China actually intervened.” (Banco, [14:20]).
• Sam Stein reads directly:
  • “We did not identify China attempting to interfere with election infrastructure or provide funding to any candidates or parties.” ([15:22])
  • The report says the real interference came from Russia and Iran spreading doubt about US elections—ironically, exactly what this Trump speech may do ([17:48]):
    • “Some foreign actors … spread false or inflated claims about alleged compromises of voting systems to try to undermine public confidence in election processes and results.” (Stein, [17:50])

5. Risks and Internal Dissent

• Division Among Trump Allies:
  • Not everyone in Trump’s camp supports this message. “There are people who really don’t want him to do this. Right. This is like, not everyone’s on board with this.” (Banco, [18:22])
• Fear of Undermining Their Own Base:
  • Strategic concern: Overstating vulnerabilities may suppress Republican turnout by convincing voters the system is too compromised to participate.
  • “If we put something out that doesn’t have clear … evidence that votes were actually flipped, right, then all we’re doing is … telling our base what they already think, which is they can’t trust the election infrastructure and then they won’t to vote.” (Banco, [19:16])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the point of tonight’s speech:

  • “Our election infrastructure is unreliable. Can’t trust it. That’s … the main message we expect Trump to talk about.”
    — Erin Banco [02:52]

• On the timing of interventions:

  • “We were worried about … they’d wait till the very last minute to say anything and then say, well, well, it’s too late, so got to go to paper or we’re going to send the federal government.”
    — Erin Banco [04:02]

• On dismantling election safeguards:

  • “He sort of ousted the remaining leaders of that agency, and it really did leave the agency paralyzed … they can’t really do anything at this point.”
    — Erin Banco [07:02]

• On the real threat identified in official reports:

  • “Some foreign actors … spread false or inflated claims about alleged compromises of voting systems to try to undermine public confidence in election processes and results. That’s what Trump’s going to be doing tonight.”
    — Sam Stein [17:48]

• On the political risk for Trump:

  • “If we put something out that doesn’t have clear … evidence that votes were actually flipped, right, then all we’re doing is stirring the pot and telling our base what they already think … and then they won’t to vote.”
    — Erin Banco [19:16]

• Closing Note:

  • Humorous aside about a teleprompter operator betting on Trump speeches on Kalshi prediction markets:
    — “He was betting on Kalshi. Yeah. On Trump’s speeches. Made a hundred thousand dollars but then got caught.”
    — Sam Stein & Erin Banco [20:02]

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Important Timestamps

• [02:52] – Erin Banco’s overview of Trump’s anticipated speech theme.
• [06:36] – Explanation of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC).
• [07:02] – Detailing the White House’s paralyzing of the EAC.
• [09:00] – Breakdown of key players orchestrating the messaging and policy push.
• [13:15] – Discussion of the 2021 National Intelligence Report findings.
• [15:22] – Stein reads out the report’s conclusions on China.
• [17:48] – Stein highlights the real threat: foreign influence campaigns undermining confidence.
• [18:22] – Banco describes internal opposition to the speech.
• [19:16] – Analysis of the risk to GOP turnout.

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Episode Flow and Tone

The conversation is brisk, direct, and laced with dry wit—especially about internal White House dramas and the unintended ironies of Trump’s strategy. Both Stein and Banco are candid about the underlying dangers of politicizing election security without evidence, but the tone is analytical and not fatalistic or hyperbolic.

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Takeaway

This episode starkly highlights how supposedly technical debates about election security are being weaponized for political advantage—and why even some Trump insiders fear the blowback. As the country heads into another contentious election season, the risks from both foreign actors and domestic politicians raising doubts about US democracy are front and center.

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Transcript

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[Sam Stein]

Hey everyone, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bulwark, and I'm joined by my dear friend, the very talented Aaron Banko. National why are you laughing? Laugh at that. You are my dear friend. You are my dear friend. You are very talented national security reporter for Reuters. Aaron and I worked long ago at the Daily Beast. Aaron, you've been writing a lot on even though you're. Well, I guess they're kind of coming together. You write on national security and the intelligence community and yet your most recent stories have been on election integrity, or election security, I should say, and the administration's efforts to basically undo or sack a bunch of people, election officials. This is all culminating tonight, which is why we have you on this program, because Trump's giving a speech. We think we know it's about like, you know The Chinese hack the election. I don't know. What is your. Yeah, well, what is your latest? As we record this at 1:20pm on Thursday, what's your latest sense of what it's going to be about?

[Aaron Banko]

So I think, you know, headline broadly, you know, our election infrastructure is unreliable. Can't trust it. That's, I think, kind of the main message we expect Trump to talk about, or sort of the message he wants to send to Americans. And then I think, you know, sort of under that headline are two broad buckets of information we'll probably hear about, you know, foreign interference in US Elections or alleged foreign interference in US Elections or intent of foreign countries to maybe one day interfere. Right. I think we're a little unjust. Sure. Whether or not Trump is going to claim outright that a country interfered in our elections or that they had the intent and ability to interfere, those are two very different things. But broadly speaking, he's going to be focusing on China a lot, and then he'll also mention Venezuela. And each of those countries have sort of a different backstory to them when it comes to US Elections. And the narrative from the White House.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, let's get into backstory in a second. But first, sort of the buildup. So I guess the first question I have is, why is this all happening now?

[Aaron Banko]

So, listen, I've been covering this world only since the beginning of his second term. And the reason for that is because, you know, sort of in an unprecedented way, the intelligence community got really involved in election work right away under mostly Tulsi Gabbard was sort of at the helm of that effort. And so we've been tracking what the administration has been doing broadly, but also very specifically within the ic. And it's all part of this effort by the administration across several different federal agencies to sort of reshape the way Americans vote. And so whether it's the DOJ working on this or ODNI or what have you, that's sort of like the basic premise of what they've been trying to achieve. And so the intelligence community specifically has been looking at our voting infrastructure, our voting machines, the machines themselves, whether or not they have flaws or vulnerabilities or need updates. So we've seen seizures of machines in Puerto Rico. We've seen seizure of materials from Georgia. So this has been a running theme in the intelligence community for quite some time. There's been sort of parallel investigations, one within ODNI and one with from the White House under their former Election Integrity Director. And a lot of this, though, was Sort of probed and looked at and almost finished last October. So we were expecting to see something come out, you know, maybe in January or late last year. And so, but. But what we were worried about was that they might wait until it was too late to fix anything. Right. If there really were vulnerabilities in Mach or flaws in machines that that could be fixed. Right. Like, these are flaws we've known about for a long time that don't necessarily. And flaws, by the way, don't necessarily mean that, like, votes are going to be flipped. It just means, like, like your computer needs an update, machines need updates. Right. But what we were worried about is that they'd wait till the very last minute to say anything and then say, well, well, it's too late, so got to go to paper or we're going to send the federal government.

[Sam Stein]

I wouldn't rule out that possibility. Right. Like, there's a possibility tonight, for instance, that he does something like that where the. And I don't want to get to that in a second, but you also reported on the firing of members of the Election Assistance Commission.

[Aaron Banko]

Yeah.

[Sam Stein]

Which I think connected, obviously part of this. Right. So I don't think a lot of people know what the EAC does and why it's significant, why states are kind of freaking out about this.

[Aaron Banko]

Right.

[Sam Stein]

Can you explain that?

[Aaron Banko]

Yeah. So the EAC is, you know, a bipartisan commission that's supposed to be overseen by Congress. And what it does, basically, is it works with state and local officials to administer elections. And that can mean a lot of different things. But one of the main core functions of the EAC is they need to pass guidelines and certified guidelines that states are supposed to follow in terms of how they use their actual machines, what systems they're supposed to be running on.

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[Aaron Banko]

Like, they're the. They're the body that creates the guidelines that the states look to or the locals look to for what should we be doing on elections. And so what Trump did is he sort of ousted the remaining leaders of that agency, and it really did leave the agency paralyzed in the sense that they can't take up any new business by their bylaws, they can't really do anything at this point. And so, you know, if we hear Trump tonight talking about voting machines and vulnerabilities, and we know the White House has been very anti EAC for a long time because they think that they're not helping the issue. The question is, is Trump going to officially try to get rid of the EAC altogether, to bypass it completely to do what he wants to do with voting machines, whether that be taking machines offline or sending a phone to update.

[Sam Stein]

Could he take machines offline? I mean, like, the perception is that this is state by state. Right. Like every state has its own voting method.

[Aaron Banko]

Well, he could declare a national emergency. He could, he could write an eo. Like, he could try to do all these things. Yes. Would it be shot down in court? Yes, but he could try to do all these things. And I think it's, it sort of behooves us to understand that this is like, not a slapdash effort. This has been a speech and an effort that has been planned for over the last year. Stephen Miller, who is obviously a very prominent figure in the White House, has been very involved in this. We know the way Stephen works. He thinks ahead. He thinks about the law, he thinks about what we can, what they can try to achieve realistically, and how to work the system. Right. Like, that's what he does. He's done it on immigration, he's tried to do it on the SAVE act and on requiring, you know, papers for citizenship to vote. So, you know, it's unclear exactly what they'll try to do, but the firings of the EAC and the emphasis on the voting machines tonight suggest to me that they're interested in trying to do something with the machines. And we know.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, if I'm, if I'm hearing this correctly, I'm going to try to summarize it the best I can. They have people inside the White House who are obsessive over this stuff, including Trump, and then includes Stephen Miller also, who's John Solomon, who is brought in, who's been writing about this stuff on the outside now is on the inside. They have taken steps to dismantle the federal infrastructure so that they can potentially assert themselves on the states. And then they're going to lay the predicate for all this tonight.

[Aaron Banko]

Correct.

[Sam Stein]

By saying there's real vulnerabilities out there. We have intelligence, we have gathered all this information from the past elections, which show that these countries were able to manipulate the voting machines in these states and so on and so forth. Therefore, the federal government has to move in more aggressively to protect our vote. That's about what we expect.

[Aaron Banko]

That's a good summary. I mean, we don't know what they'll do, but we know they've talked about declaring a national emergency, creating a federal task force. I mean, will they actually declare, you know, talk about that tonight? I don't, I don't know. This this to me reads more of like, you know, this is the first time Trump has really, in a big way, from a podium, gotten up and talked about the election, 2020, all the stuff he's been parroting over the years.

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[Aaron Banko]

He's going to have all his cabinet secretaries there. It's really supposed to. Well, a lot of them, yeah.

[Sam Stein]

Okay.

[Aaron Banko]

Yeah. And so it's supposed to be a show and it's supposed to be a messaging campaign to the American people. He's making his case to the American people. Right. And Trump doesn't just get up and talk to talk. Like there's always what we know about.

[Sam Stein]

I don't know about that.

[Aaron Banko]

There's always something.

[Sam Stein]

Well, sometimes he gets up to talk, to talk.

[Aaron Banko]

Not, not in a, not, not in a scheduled prime time address. You know, that is. This is probably.

[Sam Stein]

Which gets me to my point though. Like, why now? I mean, I get, I understood what you said, but we are in July.

[Aaron Banko]

What we were worried about as we were reporting this is that we were like, why aren't you fixing it? You're telling us there are vulnerabilities. Right. We're meeting our sources inside the government. Why aren't you doing anything? And then it became clear, like, oh, they're just gonna wait till like, logistically you can't do anything other than pull stuff offline or whatever. Right.

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[Sam Stein]

Let's talk about, let's talk about the actual evidence we have of foreign interference because it does seem like he's going to talk, as you said, about China, about Venezuela, maybe about Iran. I don't think he's going to mention Russia. Just going to put it out there. No, the, the, the, the, the national intelligence report in March 2021 about the 2020 elections.

[Aaron Banko]

Yeah.

[Sam Stein]

You read the report?

[Aaron Banko]

Yes.

[Sam Stein]

Okay, just want to make sure, because I read it too. It's only like 11.

[Aaron Banko]

Good. Good for you.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, I did my prep work. Aaron, do you want to summarize it or should I summarize it?

[Aaron Banko]

I mean, I can summarize the parts that I think are going to be important to the speech itself and specifically related to China. I mean, the underlying thing everyone should know is that there was no suggestion or evidence or analysis that said any foreign country interfered or flipped votes at scale or what or. Right. So let's start there and then we get to the China piece and you'll notice in, in this report that there's like a dissent section. And this is how the intelligence community, you know, works and does these things. And there was a whole hoopla around this dissent back when this was all going on because it was viewed as very controversial at the time. And the dissent was related China. And, you know, the people who wrote the dissent believed that China, you know, was really trying to interfere Right. In the election. And they were writing this, I should say, in the months prior to the election, even though this report became, came out after,

[Sam Stein]

it was the Trump administration that put this report together.

[Aaron Banko]

Correct, Correct. And so the dissent is been debated over time. Right. But why it was controversial is because it really went, it went against the top line of the ic. You know, it challenged it. And so there are a lot, there's lots of underlying intelligence that's attached to that dissent. There was also what we found out, what's called an alternative views paper that this analyst wrote that was highly classified and had all sort of the raw intelligence that he was pulling on to write this. And there's been some consternation inside the administration now about whether to declassify it for a lot of different reasons. But at the end of the day, that that paper and that dissent still didn't say, despite, you know, going against the fact that, you know, the IC had said China didn't have the intention or ability to do intervention it still did not say that China actually intervened. Right. So I think that's really important to know.

[Sam Stein]

I'll read from it. We assess that China did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US Presidential election. They go on. We did not identify China attempting to interfere with election infrastructure or provide funding to any candidates or parties. We says that Beijing also believes there's a bipartisan consensus against China in the United States that leaves no prospect for a pro China administration regardless of the election outcome. It goes on. Beijing probably expected that President Biden would be more predictable and eager to initially de. Escalate bilateral tensions, but would pose a greater challenge over the long run because he would be more successful in mobilizing a global alliance against China and, and criticizing China's human rights records. So that, that, that's the China section.

[Aaron Banko]

Right. And, and, you know, I'm glad we made that clear. And it's, you know, it's uncertain sort of exactly what Trump will say as it relates to China. I think broadly what he'll say is that it was like China's policy to try to intervene, interfere in favor of Democrats because they didn't like Trump or. Right. I don't think he's going to get into the baseline intelligence stuff because it's too complicated for them to talk about because. And it also exposes the fact that this cover up that they claim happened in his own administration. Right. So I think he'll try to like broad brush stroke, you know, sort of broadly say that China is up to no good as it relates to US Elections. And he'll insinuate a lot, but I sort of doubt he's going to come forward with any.

[Sam Stein]

But it's so funny because he's got this weird relationship with China himself where he's sort of, you know, I don't

[Aaron Banko]

think he cares like he's going out. This is. Right. Like this is his, the number one thing that he likes talking about. Right.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, that's true. Now, the irony of all this is that the, the, this National Intelligence report or Council report did say that one form of interference that foreign actors did engage in, and that included Russia and Iran, was a deliberate aggressive campaign to actually make people in America doubt the legitimacy of their elections and their election infrastructure. So I'll read again.

[Aaron Banko]

It was an influence campaign. Yeah.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah. So they say some foreign actors, such as Iran and Russia, spread false or inflated claims about alleged compromises of voting systems to try to undermine public comment confidence in election processes. And results. That's what Trump's going to be doing tonight. He's going to be spreading inflated claims about alleged compromises of voting systems to try to undermine public confidence in election processes. And I think isn't that ironic, as Alanis would say.

[Aaron Banko]

Irony aside, though?

[Sam Stein]

Yeah.

[Aaron Banko]

You know, I think actually, if you talk to people inside this debate, there are people who really don't want him to do this. Right. This is like, not everyone's on board with this. They want.

[Sam Stein]

What do you mean by that?

[Aaron Banko]

Passed? Well, like, I think there's. There's a difference between wanting the SAVE act pass, which has to do with, like, citizenship, and it's more tilted in the immigration realm as it relates to. To, to elections. It doesn't really. It doesn't talk about voting machines, it doesn't talk about voting infrastructure. Right. So I think there are people who are very strongly in favor of getting that passed. But when it comes to these, like, flaws in the system and China and Venezuela, like, I think a lot of people inside this debate right now view it as too risky to bring up again. Right. That. It, that.

[Sam Stein]

Why? Because it will dissuade. Dissuade their own voters from using.

[Aaron Banko]

I think they're worried about that. Yeah, I think they're worried about. I know there have been conversations in the White House over the last year about this, about the fact that if we put something out that doesn't have clear, you know, you know, evidence that votes were actually flipped, right. Then all we're doing is sort of stirring the pot and telling our base what they already think, which is they can't trust the election infrastructure and then they won't to vote.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah.

[Aaron Banko]

So, you know, I think that's been a concern.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah. All right, so we'll be watching tonight on TV. What time does he speak? 9pm Okay, 9pm you're not betting on it. Like, did you see that ABC News story about the teleprompter operator who bets on. Who was betting on Trump's speeches?

[Aaron Banko]

No. That's amazing.

[Sam Stein]

Go look it up. Yeah. He was betting on Kalshi. Yeah. On Trump's speeches. Made a hundred thousand dollars but then got caught. Don't bet on his speeches. All right, Aaron Banko, thank you so much for doing this. Appreciate it. Everyone should be checking out her work, even though it's not here at the Bulwark. It's okay. Go read it. It's everywhere. Of course. Anytime. Subscribe to the feed, folks. Bye.

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