According to biographer Michael Wolff, President Donald Trump is establishing a foundation to declare the 2026 midterm elections fraudulent before ballots are even cast, according to his assessment that the president’s forceful advocacy for the controversial SAVE America Act is a deliberate tactic to justify expected GOP defeats in November.
In a Tuesday, March 24 conversation with co-host Joanna Coles on The Daily Beast’s “Inside Trump’s Head” podcast, Wolff explained that Trump understands his flagship voting legislation cannot secure enough congressional support, which is actually central to his plan. The biographer asserts Trump is advocating for the measure to create an advance excuse: after Republicans surrender seats in November, he can fault Democrats for preventing election changes.
The SAVE America Act, under Senate consideration before lawmakers left for a scheduled break lasting until April 13, would require citizenship verification for voter registration, essentially abolish voting by mail, exclude transgender women from female athletics, and bar gender-affirming procedures for those under 18 through bill amendments. Brennan Center analysis indicates over 21 million Americans cannot easily obtain the documentation this legislation would demand, potentially creating substantial new voting obstacles for almost 10 percent of eligible voters.
Democrats on March 26 defeated a Republican proposal considered the GOP’s most substantial effort to move the bill forward since Senate discussions commenced on March 17, a setback that led senators to break for recess without voting. Certain advocates have subsequently suggested advancing the measure via budget reconciliation to avoid the 60-vote filibuster requirement, although procedural regulations make this approach extraordinarily challenging. Notwithstanding the legislation’s bleak outlook, President Trump has positioned its passage as a key condition in continuing talks to reopen the Department of Homeland Security amid a partial closure now in its sixth week. He demands that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appropriations, including wages for unpaid Transportation Security Administration (TSA) personnel experiencing unprecedented absence rates, depend on the SAVE Act’s enactment.
Numerous surveys indicate the 79-year-old president and his party face severely negative approval numbers. A recent Reuters/Ipsos survey revealed only 36 percent of Americans supported Trump’s job performance, declining from 40 percent a week earlier. The Silver Bulletin aggregate places Trump’s net approval at -16.7 as of March 28, representing a fresh second-term minimum. Democrats maintain a 6-point advantage in the generic congressional ballot, and since the opposition party traditionally gains momentum approaching midterms, analysts predict Republicans confront a genuine possibility of surrendering House majority.
Adding to public discontent: Trump’s conflict with Iran, initiated on Feb. 28 alongside Israel without legislative authorization and now in its fifth week, combined with the continuing DHS closure that has resulted in 100,000 federal workers without pay, the assignment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel to airports, and internal conflicts between Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner regarding Middle East strategy.
Shortly before 2 a.m. on Tuesday, Trump repeated his long-debunked claim on Truth Social that non-U.S. citizens vote in American elections on a massive scale. “Democrats are desperate to keep illegals, no matter how bad or dangerous they may be, in the Country. They want them to VOTE!” the president wrote at 1:48 a.m.
State-level audits tell a different story. Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger identified just 20 noncitizens registered to vote during an October 2024 audit of 8.2 million registered voters, and only nine had ever cast a ballot. Michigan’s Department of State found 15 instances of non-citizens voting in the 2024 presidential election, representing 0.00028 percent of the more than 5.7 million ballots cast.
Wolff maintains that Trump’s continued emphasis on the voter fraud story fulfills a tactical function beyond legislation: “It’s just what is to his advantage is just the narrative that the election system in the United States is broken.”
The Trump biographer indicated the president has used this approach throughout his political life. When Coles noted that Trump views the system as flawless when victorious and corrupted when defeated, Wolff responded directly: “Yes, but he’s not going to win. So the system is going to be rigged.”
The White House responded with a statement from Communications Director Steven Cheung: “Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s*** and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
As the 2026 midterms draw near, Wolff’s analysis indicates Trump is positioning himself not for winning elections but for a recognizable loss response: asserting the system was corrupted against him. The SAVE Act, regardless of its legislative fate, seems constructed to supply the president with prepared justifications when Republican defeats accumulate this November.
Facing escalating domestic and international challenges, a military conflict without defined goals, gasoline costs increased nearly a dollar per gallon since February, and federal employees working without compensation, voters will determine whether they tolerate another cycle of election denial from a president whose assertions of widespread voter fraud have been consistently refuted by members of his own party.
