MS NOW once again warned viewers about Trump’s efforts to manipulate elections. During Wednesday’s The Weeknight, the panel’s discussion of alleged Republican election “cheating” left out some significant history from the Democratic Party’s own redistricting battles.
Co-host Luke Russert claimed Republicans were moving toward “malfeasance” because they were “getting clobbered at the polls.”
Followed with a profanity-laced dismissal of President Donald Trump, co-host Michael Steele called out how Americans “cannot be disenchanted from the act that we are called upon by the Constitution in this moment to do,” “despite whatever hiccup or roadblock or BS Donald Trump wants to put in front of us…”
President of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee John Bisognano then joined the discussion to accuse Republicans of manipulating congressional districts, and declared “I think the through line on all of it is cheating, right?”
Bisognano proceeded to accuse Trump of launching a redistricting effort after signing the One Big Beautiful Bill, suggesting Republicans anticipated the legislation's economic consequences and wanted to manipulate electoral maps in response (Click “expand”):
And that's a scary thing to look back. They knew, they knew what they were doing to the economy then. They went back to a moment and said, “what we did is going to be really damaging and only going to get worse, so we better start cheating now.”
And they did. He stood there and said, “we're going to redraw Texas and we're going to redraw more states.” And the only thing he didn't count on, to your point, was the American people fighting back. And luckily for us, you know, we had Attorney General Holder and leader Jeffries in the mix to make sure that we were fighting back as hard as we could.
And we fought this back so that this redistricting gambit is going to have backfired. But I'll tell you right now, everyone needs to get out and vote, and they need to do it in mass and in every possible region and, and district and state needs to get out and vote. And that's what I've spent most of my career working on. I think it's the most important thing.
But Bisognano's criticism conveniently overlooked Democrats' own redistricting history, particularly in New York.
In February of 2022, Hochul signed a congressional map drawn by the Democrat-controlled Legislature that sought to improve her party's position in the state's congressional delegation, leaving Republicans with as few seats as possible. The map was challenged in court, and New York's Court of Appeals ultimately invalidated it in April of 2022.
Democrats weren't finished, however. In February 2024, following the 2022 midterms, Hochul signed another Democrat-drawn congressional map ahead of the presidential election. The new boundaries gave Democrats a slight advantage in several competitive districts, and held the potential to improve their position in the battle for control of the House.
While Bisognano was accusing Republicans of “cheating,” his own party had a recent history of pursuing partisan advantages through congressional redistricting, including an earlier attempt that was actually ruled unconstitutional.
The 2024 Iowa poll is another striking example of politicians' use of polling numbers to suggest an election is decided. The Des Moines Iowa Poll showed Kamala Harris leading Trump, yet Trump won the state by approximately 13 points (an almost 16 point polling error).
Polling errors were also found by The American Association for Public Opinion Research in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. The 2016 poll contained errors to many battleground states, and suggested a totally different picture of the country. The 2020 polls overstated the Biden-Trump margin by an average of 3.9 percentage points nationally, and 4.3 points in state level polling.
There’s a reason Democratic campaigns tell supporters to not put trust in the polls, not to rest on their laurels, and to run through the tape. It’s basic political strategy: keep voters motivated, avoid complacency, and get out the vote. Encouraging turnout is not evidence for election cheating.
The circumstances surrounding the Trump administration's current election-related legal disputes are not identical to state-level redistricting, and each deserves examination on its own merits. But Democrats' record is certainly relevant when their representatives make sweeping accusations about the other party's motives.
If partisan redistricting is a threat to election fairness, that standard should apply regardless of which party benefits. Apparently, that was a piece of history The Weeknight panel wasn't particularly interested in discussing.
The transcript is below: Click "expand" to read:
MS NOW’s The Weeknight
October 28, 2026
07:03:20 p.m. Eastern(...)
LUKE RUSSERT: It feels as if the preemptive meddling is out there very interested in this ruling from the judge in California on what will happen regarding those ballots. But I think what's very clear now is we see and we've talked about on this show for quite a long time, that the GOP is going to try and go into the direction of malfeasance because they are getting clobbered at the polls.
07:05:27
(...)
MICHAEL STEELE: We cannot be disenchanted from the act that we are called upon by the Constitution in this moment to do. And despite whatever hiccup or roadblock or BS Donald Trump wants to put in front of us if he wants to go out and you know, back that you know what up, he can go ahead and do that right all day long if that's what you're if that that that's you Trump doing.
07:06:42
(...)
JOHN BISOGNANO (NAT’L DEMOCRATIC REDISTRICTING COMMITTEE PRESIDENT): I think the through line on all of it is cheating, right? And this is– I'll take you even further back than Louisiana. Let's go back to Donald Trump standing in front of Marine One in talking about Texas, when he said he took a moment immediately after they passed the Big Beautiful Bill.
And that's a scary thing to look back. They knew, they knew what they were doing to the economy then. They went back to a moment and said, “what we did is going to be really damaging and only going to get worse, so we better start cheating now.”
And they did. He stood there and said, “we're going to redraw Texas and we're going to redraw more states.” And the only thing he didn't count on, to your point, was the American people fighting back. And luckily for us, you know, we had Attorney General Holder and leader Jeffries in the mix to make sure that we were fighting back as hard as we could.
And we fought this back so that this redistricting gambit is going to have backfired. But I'll tell you right now, everyone needs to get out and vote, and they need to do it in mass and in every possible region and, and district and state needs to get out and vote. And that's what I've spent most of my career working on. I think it's the most important thing.
(...)
