How Trump Could Break the 2026 Elections
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What was David Frum's reaction to the racist AI video involving Obama?
Hello, and welcome back to The David Frum Show. I'm David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic. My guest this week will be Stephen Richer, formerly recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, the chief election official in the city of Phoenix in the swing state of Arizona. And we'll be discussing election integrity and the threats to election integrity, the conspiracy theories and lies that are told about elections past, and that present a threat to the integrity of free and fair elections in 2026. My book this week is The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which I choose because this month, February 2026, marks the 250th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of that book, of that famous book, in February 1776.
There were six volumes altogether, the last published in 1788, but February 1776 begins, announces the arrival of this tremendous achievement of historical research and English literary triumph. Before turning to either the dialogue, or the book, I want to begin with some thoughts about a very upsetting thing that happened over the past few days, and that is the posting on the social media account of the President of the United States of a scurrilous, racist, insulting, and stupid video about the past President of the United States, President Barack Obama, and his wife, former First Lady Michelle Obama. I'm sure many of you have seen the video or images of it. You know what I'm talking about. You've heard the many stories that the Trump White House has told, many contradictory stories about how this came to be.
I'm not interested in decoding which of those stories is closest to the truth or furthest from a lie. And I'm not interested in adding my voice, one more condemnation to this offensive and stupid act. The whole country has reverberated with condemnation, which is right and just. And I'll say, I agree.
How did Stephen Richer navigate the challenges of election integrity in Arizona?
What more can be said? But there is a deeper thing going on here that does deserve some comment. You know, race, of course, is the fundamental thing. chasm, a fundamental wound in American society. And moving toward a more just racial constitution of the United States has been the work, oh, well, it's been a work that is never, you cannot date when it begins and you cannot date when it ends. It goes on and continues to this day. But the society is changing and a new racial constitution has been coming into being. Right now, about 93 million Americans are either immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants. That's almost a third of the country. It's a different country than it was when the Civil Rights Act was passed or when the affirmative actions programs of the 1970s began to be devised.
In the half century since those affirmative action programs have come to be devised, the racial fabric of America has been reinvented in many ways. And one of the questions that we're all left in the 2020s is whether these programs of racial restitution continue to make sense in a country that is so different from the country that existed when these programs were put into place. Now, it has fallen to the Trump administration. It has fallen in the Trump administration's time to respond to these changes. The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled in important decisions that it is more and more skeptical of programs of racial preference to correct for past racial injustice.
What pressures did Stephen face regarding Trump's election denial claims?
In 2023, a pair of cases ruled that preferential treatment of undergraduates seeking admission to colleges is probably almost always illegal. And the Trump administration, in one of its more normal actions, something that you would expect from a more normal kind of government, has followed up or responded to the lead of the Supreme Court by issuing executive orders, rolling back preferential treatment in many areas of employment and hiring. And many American companies have responded by changing their approach to equal opportunity. They are ending the practice of trying to ameliorate past injustice by having preferences in the present and moving toward an approach that treats all applicants more equally than they have been treated in the recent past.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What was David Frum's reaction to the racist AI video involving Obama?
0:11–2:01
2
How did Stephen Richer navigate the challenges of election integrity in Arizona?
2:01–3:29
3
What pressures did Stephen face regarding Trump's election denial claims?
3:29–5:30
4
What is the significance of the Trump administration's actions in Georgia for the 2026 elections?
5:30–7:02
5
How does Edward Gibbon's work relate to modern political discourse?
7:02–8:29
6
What lessons can we learn from Gibbon's analysis of the Roman Empire?
8:29–9:53
7
How are current election integrity issues impacting the political landscape?
9:53–10:57
8
What are the implications of the SAVE Act and other Republican election proposals?
10:57–57:30