meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Slate Daily Feed

What Next - Trump Starts the Steal

Slate Daily Feed

Slate

Business, News, Society & Culture

3.91.1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2026

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Trump has called for elections to be “nationalized,” something neither the president, nor the federal government, has the authority to do. But as he’s already sent the FBI to raid Fulton County, Georgia’s election offices with director of intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and with the midterms on their way, it’s time to ask how much damage a vindictive president could do.


Guest:  Ari Berman, voting rights reporter at Mother Jones. 


Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen.


Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

A couple weeks back, this ominous thing happened that even now is hard to parse.

0:14.8

Tonight, this video shows federal agents raiding an election center in Fulton County, Georgia.

0:20.3

Some FBI agents showed up at an election center in Fulton County, Georgia. The county says it was certain.

0:21.2

Some FBI agents showed up at an election center in Fulton County, Georgia.

0:26.7

And they came out the other side with box after box of ballots.

0:32.8

Now a copy of the search warrant given to us by county officials suggests the evidence they took includes physical ballots, tabulator tapes, valid images, and voter rolls from the 2020 general election.

0:42.8

Because federal prosecutors believe there's evidence of the commission of a criminal offense,

0:47.7

everything else in the case is sealed.

0:51.2

What's going on here has been so mysterious that when I asked Ari Berman from over at Mother

0:56.8

Jones to lay it all out for me, he said this.

1:00.5

I can lay it out, although I think what's going to happen throughout this conversation is

1:04.7

you are going to ask me a lot of questions about Fullen County.

1:07.9

And I am not going to have good answers for a lot of them because we don't

1:12.3

have good answers about a lot of things relating to this raid.

1:19.8

What we do know, because local electeds showed up to document this raid, is that those 2020

1:25.9

ballots are gone. Most of them, ballots filled out by residents of Metro Atlanta. Do we know where these boxes went?

1:33.3

That is one of the many unanswered questions. I heard they are being brought to FBI headquarters in Virginia, but we don't have confirmation of that. We don't know who's handling the boxes.

1:45.8

We don't know who's overseeing the process for the boxes.

1:49.2

The only indication of why they want the ballots from 2020 is that, according to the warrant,

1:57.6

they said there is evidence needed for a criminal investigation. There is

2:02.9

nothing criminal about the 2020 election. So that is...

2:05.7

How have we been here before? That is the biggest red flag about all of this. We have been here

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Slate and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.