Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) said President Donald Trump was attempting to “stop the elections in 2026 or, frankly, take control of those elections.”
Partial transcript as follows:
ED O’KEEFE: What do you think it’s going to do to the country if that happens? Deploying in Washington, where he has federal control, is one thing, but if he sends military forces into a major American city- in a state that didn’t ask for it, beyond Los Angeles, what do Americans make of that?
PRITZKER: Well, they should understand that he has other aims, other than fighting crime. That’s the first thing they should understand. The second is, it’s an attack on the American people by the President of the United States. Now, he may disagree with a state that didn’t vote for him. But should he be sending troops in? No. And think about what- think about what he says. He says he’s sending troops to fight crime. Are any of the red states that voted for him- voted for him, seeing troops in their states, and yet they have higher crime rates than the city of Chicago? No.
O’KEEFE: You said he has other aims. What are the other aims?
PRITZKER: The other aims are that he’d like to stop the elections in 2026 or, frankly, take control of those elections. He’ll just claim that there’s some problem with an election, and then he’s got troops on the ground that can take control if, in fact, he’s allowed to do this. We have sovereignty. There’s a 10th Amendment in the United States, and it says that the states have sovereignty. Our laws are supreme unless there is a federal law that supersedes it. Our National Guard should be under the control of our governors. When the President calls up the National Guard, in my entire lifetime, that has only been to either enforce a federal law, in the case of 1965, as you’re aware, that was done, or to send them, as regularly happens, happened under Biden, happened under every president my lifetime, to send them abroad to fight for this country, because they’re trained to go to war. They’re trained to protect the country. They’re not trained to do law enforcement on the street.
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