'If You Can Keep It': Election Integrity And The Upcoming Midterms
1A
NPR
4.3 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 9 February 2026
⏱️ 45 minutes
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Summary
As people around the country prepare to head to the polls to decide who will run in this year’s midterms, the president is once again trying to undermine the most basic functions of elections. He’s still spreading lies about past elections he lost and is now sowing seeds of doubt in the local elections process. There is no evidence to support Trump’s repeated, false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
In late January, the FBI seized boxes of 2020 election ballots and other voting records in Fulton County, Georgia, which for years has been the focus of his baseless conspiracy theory that the election was rigged.
In this installment of our weekly politics series, “If You Can Keep It,” we explore what the president’s latest attacks on election integrity mean for the future of our democracy.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This message comes from the Pulitzer finalist NHPR team. |
| 0:04.2 | Their new four-part series, Safe to Drink, |
| 0:06.8 | investigates one of the largest water contamination events in New Hampshire's history |
| 0:10.9 | and the people who fought for answers. |
| 0:13.3 | Follow Safe to Drink wherever you're listening. |
| 0:28.2 | We're just a few weeks out now from the very first state primary elections of the year. |
| 0:32.9 | President Trump and the party he leads are, at the moment, unpopular. |
| 0:38.4 | As people around the country prepare to head to the polls to decide who will run in this year's midterm elections, the president is once again trying to undermine the most basic functions |
| 0:44.0 | of those elections. He's still spreading lies about past elections he lost, and he's now |
| 0:49.6 | showing disinformation and doubt in local and state election processes. |
| 0:54.9 | Republicans should say we want to take over. We should take over the voting in at least |
| 1:00.8 | many, 15 places. The Republicans order to nationalize the voting. And we have states |
| 1:07.6 | that are so crooked and the county votes. We have states that I won |
| 1:12.1 | that show I didn't win. There's no evidence to support Donald Trump's repeated false claims |
| 1:17.3 | of voter fraud, faulty vote counts, undocumented immigrants voting, or any of the rest of it |
| 1:22.9 | in the past presidential election. Nevertheless, in late January, the FBI at the president's direction seized |
| 1:28.5 | boxes of 2020 election ballots and other voting records in Fulton County, Georgia, which for years |
| 1:33.7 | has been the focus of his baseless conspiracy theory that the election was rigged. For this |
| 1:38.3 | installment of our weekly politics series, if you can keep it, we explore with the president's |
| 1:43.1 | latest attacks on election integrity |
| 1:44.9 | mean for the future of our democracy. I'm Jen White. And I'm Todd's Willick. You're listening to |
| 1:50.8 | the 1A podcast. Stay with us. We've got a lot to get into. This message comes from Wise, |
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