As the 2026 midterms loom, many have raised concerns about illegal aliens voting in U.S. elections. The SAVE America Act, highly endorsed by President Trump, is intended to shut down these concerns by enforcing voter I.D. standards nationwide. CNN, and the leftist media as a whole, quickly mobilized to fight against secure elections. On this Wednesday’s Erin Burnett OutFront, CNN commentator Jamal Simmons accused the President of voter suppression.
Strangely, however, Simmons didn’t actually mention the SAVE Act. Apparently, Trump’s words alone were already making it harder for people to vote:
Yeah, the President of the United States has been using his position to make political statements that are going to make it harder for people to vote. He's looking not to enable people to vote, which is what we usually expect the Justice Department to do when the Justice Department goes into a community to monitor an election.
On last night's OutFront, Jamal Simmons claims that Trump's words are making it difficult for people to vote. Must be very powerful words! Of course, he doesn't actually mention what Trump said, because he's really just fomenting anger against the President. pic.twitter.com/7R9iTbNfSF
— James Waterman (@jwatermaniv) July 15, 2026
Despite such an outlandish claim, Simmons never mentioned what Trump actually said that could singlehandedly stop people from voting. It almost seems like an unfounded scare tactic to radicalize people against the President, but CNN would never do something like that!
Continuing the trend of unfounded claims, Simmons proceeded to throw in a bizarre and incorrect condemnation of the U.S. economy:
Here's the thing: the President keeps saying that the election was rigged, but rigged against him. Everybody else in the country thinks that the economy is rigged against them. What they're looking at is a trillionaire friend of the President. They're looking at people making more and more money at the top of the income ladder while they're making less and less.
Simmons’ claims about wages, perhaps deluded by his own network’s incessant anti-Trump coverage, flew directly in the face of actual data. Last month, real wages grew by nearly a percentage point, in accordance with longer-term trends that also show consistent growth. So much for the socialist narrative about the poor getting poorer!
Maura Gillespie, a notably anti-Trump Republican strategist, then built off Simmons’ attacks on Trump’s election policy, claiming that his flagship SAVE America Act will somehow disenfranchise voters:
But I do think that people are tiring of this. Yes, the SAVE Act, SAVE America Act, the idea behind showing identity, showing proof of citizenship, identity to vote doesn't seem so far-fetched until you break down what the SAVE America Act has included in it and it does create barriers to voting and that can be problematic.
Gillespie at least acknowledged the conceptual benefits of requiring proof of citizenship to vote. Unfortunately, she then backtracked, making the bizarre claim that the SAVE Act had some secret clause that actually creates “barriers to voting.”
Reading the act itself, however, it becomes evident that the act goes no further than establishing the voter I.D. requirements Gillespie claims to agree with. Why would CNN fearmonger about parts of the SAVE Act that don’t exist?
The transcript is below. Click "view" to read.
CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront
July 14, 2026
7:37:43 p.m. Eastern
(...)JAMAL SIMMONS: Yeah, the President of the United States has been using his position to make political statements that are going to make it harder for people to vote. He's looking not to enable people to vote, which is what we usually expect the Justice Department to do when the Justice Department goes in to a community to monitor an election: it's to help people vote. This looks like he's trying to keep people from voting.
Here's the thing: the President keeps saying that the election was rigged, but rigged against him. Everybody else in the country thinks that the economy is rigged against them. What they're looking at is a trillionaire friend of the President. They're looking at people making more and more money at the top of the income ladder while they're making less and less.
And all the time, the President's talking about himself and one election that he lost, instead of thinking about how much the American people are.
ERIN BURNETT: And when he talks about rigged elections, I mean, I go back to what Thomas Massie recently said, who when Trump turned against him, because Trump does have incredible power, the MAGA base, right? Massie's now out.
But Massie's like, “What are we talking about rigged elections for? We have the White House, we have the House, we have the Senate, we have the Supreme Court. I mean, if it's rigged, it's rigged for us.”
GILLESPIE: And not only that, but if it's rigged, that means that Barack Obama's administration rigged it and let Trump win in 2016, and then Biden's administration rigged it to let him win in 2024. So, I don't understand where his thought process is that if there's some corruption there deep-seated, because then that means that –
SIMMONS: Oh, you're still trying to make sense of this?
GILLESPIE: Forgive me for trying. No, it's one of those things where I wonder, one, Republicans are already noticing that it's bad for them. It does not poll well for them, only polls well in the MAGA base there. But I do think that people are tiring of this.
Yes, the SAVE Act, SAVE America Act, the idea behind showing identity, showing proof of citizenship, identity to vote doesn't seem so far-fetched until you break down what the SAVE America Act has included in it and it does create barriers to voting and that can be problematic.
And that's why there's been such pushback and Republicans as well saying this will not pass through our chambers, but the President only looks at it through his lens of what he wants and what helps him.
