The Atlantic staff writer and podcaster David Frum brought out his tinfoil hat on Friday when he joined MS NOW’s Deadline: White House when he suggested that President Trump could arrest people to prevent them from voting in next year’s midterms. Of course, guest host Ali Velshi decided to echo those conspiracy theories instead of pushing back on them, while Prof. Basil Smikle warned Trump will try to find a way to “nationalize voter suppression.”
Frum declared that Trump “will do anything” to win and wondered, “One of the things that the Supreme Court has authorized is the brief detention of American citizens to check that they are indeed American citizens, brief detention. How brief is brief? Can you arrest them at 3:00 in the afternoon and hold them 'til after the polls close? Is that brief?
Claiming that the Supreme Court has authorized brief detentions of American citizens is a funny way of saying it acknowledged that just because mistakes happen during ICE operations does not mean they are illegal or unconstitutional. However, Frum kept rolling:
Can you put troops on the streets in marginal areas in an effort to intimidate people who maybe have a member of their family who has a doubtful immigration status and don't want to risk any kind of encounter with the police? Can you, aside from gerrymandering, can you do other kinds of things that are at the margin of the law to shape the electorate in such a way that it's more favorable? Now, in the face of the kind of massive public discontent that seems to be brewing in the country, none of this may be enough, but when a dirty trick is the only trick you have, the dirty trick becomes your entire repertoire.
Velshi then turned to Smikle by encouraging Frum’s delusions, “Basil, this is important because, and by the way, they're probably instructions, we can talk about this for the next several months about, ‘Okay, if you think you're at risk of being detained for a few hours,’ as I am a man of a certain color in New York, ‘better vote early,’ so that I've got that chance. But that's an interesting point that David makes. If dirty tricks are all that's left, you're going to put all your energy into the dirty tricks.”
Smikle tried to wax poetic about voting and activism in the midst of such alleged danger, “I was glad to see Pete Buttigieg at the top when you introduced all of us because he speaks about this really eloquently, that it was important for Americans to believe that they have agency in this, that they can actually fight back. You can put your hope and trust in the courts and that's one thing. But being able to go out on the street, being able to go push back and lobby, because what the president will do is find a way to nationalize voter suppression. They will do that. They are doing that now.”
A few years ago, after Georgia’s voting law did not suppress the vote like liberals on MSNBC said it would, they responded by claiming that voter enthusiasm was just so high that they overcame the nefarious efforts. Frum, Velshi, and Smikle are setting up their audience to do the same thing. They will not admit they were wrong, they will simply claim, “Heads I win, tails you lose.” The only thing that will have changed is the network rebrand.
Here is a transcript for the December 12 show:
MS NOW Deadline: White House
12/12/2025
5:13 PM ET
DAVID FRUM: So he will do anything. And we—I talked on my podcast this week with Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center—he might do, you know, one of the things that the Supreme Court has authorized is the brief detention of American citizens to check that they are indeed American citizens, brief detention. How brief is brief? Can you arrest them at 3:00 in the afternoon and hold them ‘til after the polls close? Is that brief?
Can you put troops on the streets in marginal areas in an effort to intimidate people who maybe have a member of their family who has a doubtful immigration status and don't want to risk any kind of encounter with the police? Can you, aside from gerrymandering, can you do other kinds of things that are at the margin of the law to shape the electorate in such a way that it's more favorable? Now, in the face of the kind of massive public discontent that seems to be brewing in the country, none of this may be enough, but when a dirty trick is the only trick you have—
ALI VELSHI: Yeah.
FRUM:—the dirty trick becomes your entire repertoire.
VELSHI: Basil, this is important because, and by the way, they're probably instructions, we can talk about this for the next several months about, “Okay, if you think you're at risk of being detained for a few hours," as I am a man of a certain color in New York
BASIL SMIKLE: Yes.
VELSHI: —"better vote early," so that I've got that chance. But that's an interesting point that David makes. If dirty tricks are all that's left, you're going to put all your energy into the dirty tricks.
SMIKLE: And we should not expect that would ever be— that it would ever be held up, right? He's going to continue to do that because that's his go to, that's his—what he perceives as his strength. And that's why I actually was really important. I was glad to see Pete Buttigieg at the top when you introduced all of us because he speaks about this really eloquently, that it was important for Americans to believe that they have agency in this, that they can actually fight back.
You can put your hope and trust in the courts and that's one thing. But being able to go out on the street, being able to go push back and lobby, because what the president will do is find a way to nationalize voter suppression. They will do that. They are doing that now.
The question then becomes, how do we push back? And I think state to state, whether it's a party issue or it's the nonprofits that are involved in this, people do have the agency to actually push this back and remind people that in the carrot and stick approach, that stick can come in the form of your citizenship, your right to be here, being challenged when you get into your car and drive out of your house, or being chased into your house in pursuit of those that kind of information. And I think when we see those kinds of videos, it's like, ‘Well, wait a minute, I signed up for some things, but I didn't sign up for this.
