On the October 24, 2025, episode of The Briefing With Jen Psaki on MSNBC, Psaki packed a flurry of false and exaggerated accusations into just three minutes — alleging that President Trump’s “failed attempt to illegally stay in power on January 6” was being followed by what he and his administration are “doing right now” — deploying Justice Department election monitors to key counties as a “trial run.” She claimed Trump is “sending military into the streets of American cities, in part to intimidate people from participating in the democratic process,” that his allies are trying to “overturn a key section of the Voting Rights Act” and “steal back seats” through redistricting, and that his “hand-picked lackeys,” Pam Bondi and Harmeet Dhillon, are “election deniers” spreading “false election conspiracies” while being put in charge of monitoring polling places.
Jen Psaki used her show to push another round of fearmongering about Donald Trump and the upcoming off-year elections. She warned that Trump is preparing to “defy the Constitution” and described his actions as a “trial run” for staying in power. Psaki began her segment by saying:
“When you look at what Donald Trump is actually doing when it comes to our elections, the prospect of him trying to defy the Constitution to remain in office doesn’t seem so hard to believe. And I’m not just talking about his last failed attempt to illegally stay in power on January 6th. I’m talking about things he is doing and his administration is doing right now.”
In other words, Psaki tried to tie Trump’s current campaign activity to her long-standing claim that he once tried to “illegally” remain in office. But Trump did not attempt to stay in power illegally on January 6. Despite the chaos at the Capitol, he publicly called for peace, told supporters to go home, and later confirmed he would respect the constitutional process. He left Washington peacefully on schedule, as every outgoing president before him has.
Psaki continued:
“I mean, today the Justice Department announced that it plans to send election monitors to about a half dozen counties in California and New Jersey to monitor polling sites during their upcoming elections happening just 11 days from now. And some of those counties just happen to be where key congressional races will take place a year from now, which is definitely not a coincidence. We should see all of this as a trial run.”
That “trial run” claim became the centerpiece of Psaki’s segment — suggesting that the DOJ’s election monitors were part of an authoritarian rehearsal. But election monitors are not a “trial run” for dictatorship — they’re a bipartisan tradition used for decades to ensure fair voting and compliance with election law. Psaki took a standard, legal practice and twisted it into a political scare story.
She went on:
“But let’s also just put this in a bit of context. Trump’s allies are trying to overturn a key section of the Voting Rights Act. Trump is sending military into the streets of American cities, in part to intimidate people from participating in the democratic process.”
Psaki’s accusation that Trump’s allies are trying to “overturn a key section” of the Voting Rights Act is an exaggeration — and legally impossible. They’re not trying to eliminate it; they’re challenging how Section 2 is interpreted and enforced in redistricting cases like Louisiana v. Callais (SCOTUS, October 2025). Their goal is to clarify how voting maps are drawn — basing them on population and geography rather than racial quotas or partisan preferences. Her claim that Trump is “sending military into the streets” to intimidate voters is pure fiction. The October 2025 National Guard and ICE deployments in cities like Chicago and Memphis target crime and border security — with no evidence whatsoever of voter intimidation.
What Trump and Republicans are actually trying to do is strengthen election-integrity laws, ensure that voting rules are applied evenly across states, and back redistricting efforts in several states aimed at restoring balance to congressional maps that courts or Democrats had previously tilted left. Across the country, GOP-led legislatures are tightening voter-ID laws, improving mail-in ballot verification, and pushing for consistent, transparent voting standards so every legal vote counts — and every illegal one doesn’t.
These reforms aim to rebuild trust in the process after persistent weak safeguards and inconsistent verification. Psaki twisted that into a story about intimidating people from participating in the democratic process — because acknowledging that Republicans want cleaner elections doesn’t fit her narrative.
She added:
“They’ve been pressuring — as we all know, we’ve been covering this a lot — Republican leaders in red states across the country to redo their congressional maps to steal back seats.”
Redistricting happens after every census and is part of the democratic process — both parties do it. Calling it stealing is partisan framing designed to villainize Republicans for engaging in the same process Democrats use.
Psaki continued:
“And now Trump wants to put his hand-picked lackeys in charge of monitoring elections. It’s not to mention that the Trump officials who have been tapped for this election-monitoring operation are these two ladies — Attorney General Pam Bondi and Trump’s head of the Civil Rights Division, Harmeet Dhillon — both of whom are election deniers, of course. I mean, in the days after the 2020 election, Pam Bondi, who had already been one of Trump’s lawyers during his impeachment trial, sued the state of Pennsylvania, falsely claiming that Trump won the state he actually lost by 80,000 votes.”
Psaki then played a clip of Bondi suggesting that there are “fake ballots that are coming in late.” Psaki interrupted the clip to say:
“Of course, there were not fake ballots. There was no legitimate evidence of fake ballots.”
She followed with:
“But Pam Bondi went out and promoted Trump’s conspiracy theory that the election had been stolen, and now Trump is putting her in charge of monitoring polling places.”
Psaki’s dismissal left no room for the facts that made Pennsylvania’s 2020 election one of the most contested in the country — decided by just 1.16 percentage points after massive mail-in voting and last-minute rule changes that raised serious concerns about election integrity. Nearly 39 percent of all ballots were cast by mail under a system plagued by uneven standards and weak verification. The state Supreme Court extended ballot deadlines beyond Election Day, allowed some counties to “cure” defective ballots while others could not, and ruled that ballots couldn’t be rejected for signature mismatches. Poll watchers were kept at a distance, and mail-in rejection rates dropped far below historical averages.
Those aren’t “conspiracies”; they’re documented irregularities created by procedural shifts made after voting had already begun and without legislative approval.
She finished with another jab:
“And Trump’s other new top election monitor is definitely not any better. Harmeet Dhillon was also an advisor to Trump’s 2020 election campaign, and just like Bondi, she spent that time promoting false election conspiracies. And she even called upon Trump’s conservative Supreme Court appointees to put politics over principle and help overturn the results.”
Psaki’s segment wasn’t journalism — it was a masterclass in fearmongering and propaganda, turning election safeguards into a supposed Trumpian threat to democracy. The media’s double standard couldn’t be clearer: when Republicans demand transparency, it’s labeled a “conspiracy”; when Democrats do it, it’s called “defending democracy.”
Americans deserve reporters who pursue truth — not gatekeepers who bury it. Investigating election irregularities isn’t partisan; it’s patriotic. Stand up, reject the spin, and demand a media that defends democracy by telling the truth about it.
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