Trump will try to steal midterms, president of Halifax International Security Forum warns
U.S. President Donald Trump will lie about the 2026 midterm elections if the Republicans lose, Peter Van Praagh said in an essay.Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
U.S. President Donald Trump will lie about the 2026 midterm elections if the Republicans lose, Peter Van Praagh said in an essay.Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
The head of the prestigious Halifax International Security Forum is warning that U.S. President Donald Trump is preparing to steal the 2026 midterm elections.
Peter Van Praagh, president of the Washington-based think tank, said in a recently published essay that many Americans are misguided to believe that the midterms will play out fair and square.
He said the warning signs of Mr. Trump’s alleged plan to steal the Nov. 3 elections have been clear for some, just as there were plenty of warnings of terrorist attacks aimed at the U.S. homeland in the years before Sept. 11, 2001.
“The main lessons from the 9/11 tragedy – connect the dots of the information points available and use your informed imagination – must be learned to prevent the new attack on the American people: The United States government’s intention to steal the 2026 midterm elections,” he wrote.
Mr. Praagh sent the essay last week to his network of foreign-policy and security officials. The forum’s communications adviser, Dan Dugas, said Mr. Praagh has no further comment.
Demonstrators hold up a sign as they attend a 'Defend the Vote' rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, on Aug. 28.KEN CEDENO/AFP/Getty Images
Demonstrators hold up a sign as they attend a 'Defend the Vote' rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, on Aug. 28.KEN CEDENO/AFP/Getty Images
Mr. Praagh said the President will lie about the 2026 midterm elections if the Republicans lose in “such a methodical, systematic and overwhelming way” that, if successful at persuading enough people, “will cause confusion, instill fear and reduce confidence that democratic institutions are strong enough to protect the American people.”
He added: “If these efforts are successful, it will be the end of the United States as we know it.”
Mr. Praagh, a Canadian foreign-policy expert and former senior director of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, founded the Halifax International Security Forum in 2009. The federal department of National Defence provides annual funding to the organization.
The forum holds annual summits in Halifax where senior U.S. congressional members and American and Canadian generals, among others, gather to discuss international security issues, such as Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Since Mr. Trump regained the White House, however, his administration has prevented U.S military officers from attending the Halifax conference, although American senators continue to attend.
Gary Mason: With so much to lose, Donald Trump takes lying to another level
Mr. Praagh is not alone in raising fears that the President and his followers will attempt to hijack American democracy. Democratic leaders, such as California Governor Gavin Newsom and Mr. Trump’s own former lawyer, Ty Cobb, have argued that the President intends to steal the midterms if the Republicans lose to the Democrats.
Mr. Praagh noted that Mr. Trump had claimed the 2020 election, in which he lost to Joe Biden, was rigged. He encouraged his followers to storm Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.
The difference between then and now is that local polling officers and officials at the Justice Department, FBI, Homeland Security, as well as then-vice-president Mike Pence, refused to go along with the lie about that election, he said.
This time around, Mr. Praagh said the President has placed supporters in charge of those agencies “all of whom have denied the true results of the 2020 election and championed his efforts to overturn it.”
This summer, he noted, federal election monitors from the Justice Department arrived unannounced at local polling sites to interview voters and inspect voting machines.
Americans should be concerned, he said, that Mr. Trump may also send Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and National Guard members to voting stations during the midterms.
He pointed to a story in The Washington Post in February about a 17-page memo circulating inside the White House advising the President to declare a national emergency around the midterms and to claim foreign interference in the 2020 election.”
“There’s more,” Mr. Praagh said. “In early 2026, the President told NBC News that he would only accept the results of the midterm elections if he deemed them honest; in that same interview, he said that if elections can’t be done honestly, “then something else has to happen.”
Mr. Praagh predicted that the President will use his authority to seize federal ballot-counting machines and mail-in ballots should the Democrats win in November and capture the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate.
“The surest way to solve today’s threats to American democracy is also the advice offered most often and the easier to fulfill: Vote,” Mr. Praagh said.
“The good news is that an overwhelming turnout of voters will make the President’s plan more complicated and much more difficult to succeed.”
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