E.J. Dionne Jr.

When the FBI raided the Board of Elections down in Georgia, in Fulton County,

People said, well, this is about Trump's obsession with the fact that he falsely claims over and over again that he won the 2020 election.

But I think a lot of people, especially when they discovered that the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was there, I think a lot of people saw this as an attempt to affect the election.

And then Trump himself spoke of nationalizing the rules of the election.

And then he said in 15 places that

which sounded like democratic states.

And the beginning of that statement he made was Republicans should take over the elections.

So I've spoken in the last couple of weeks to a lot of lawyers, anti-Trump administration lawyers, I would say,

who are genuinely concerned about basic things like, will there be ICE agents at the polls as Steve Bannon has threatened?

Will he call out troops?

Will this be about reducing turnout?

I still like to hope that our decentralized system of elections

David, you have more than a hope?

You know, there's one convulsion you didn't have on your list, David, and that was the Civil War.

We had elections then, I should point out.

And I think you've done the same.

I've been doing a lot of reading over the recent years of the 1850s into the 1860s, both the nature of the polarization, the anger, the violence, the threats against elected officials, the depth of the mistrust.

And I find this period...

much closer to that than to some of these other periods where, yes, we've had a lot of fierce arguments in our history.

Again, I share your confidence in the people running elections at the local level.