During an interview broadcast on CBS’s Face the Nation, Senior White House correspondent Ed O’Keefe sat by as Democrat Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker uttered the wildest conspiracy theories about rigged and possibly cancelled elections in the United States. Unfortunately, he does so with no pushback.
Watch as Pritzker suggests President Donald Trump wants to cancel the 2026 midterms before correcting himself, and saying Trump merely wants to rig them:
CBS’s @EdOkeefe: “Are you talking about invasion? I hear you talking about suspending elections? Or is it your belief that he is an authoritarian?”@JBPritzker: “I can tell you this, I built a holocaust museum. I know what the history was of a constitutional republic being… pic.twitter.com/aZrjTPirHU
— Brent Baker 🇺🇲🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) August 31, 2025
ED O'KEEFE: You said he has other aims. What are the other aims?
J.B. 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.
O'KEEFE: I hear you talking about invasion. I hear you – him about – I hear you talking about him suspending elections. Is it your belief he's an authoritarian?
PRITZKER: Look, I can tell you this. I built a Holocaust museum. I know what the history was of a constitutional republic being overturned after an election in 53 days. And I'm very, very concerned. We could talk about lots of authoritarian regimes in the world, but that just happens to be the one that I know. And I can tell you that – that the playbook is the same. It's thwart the media. It's create mayhem that requires military interdiction. These are things that happened throughout history. And Donald Trump is just following that playbook.
The “other aims” that O’Keefe alluded to are “other” than helping solve Chicago’s crime problem, regarding a potential deployment of the National Guard to Illinois. The bulk of the Pritzker interview was devoted to this proposition, in response to an earlier interview of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi noem.
Prizker went in and out of his usual talking point set pieces with little challenge from O’Keefe except on the real data piece of crime being down in Washington, D.C. since the Trump takeover, including carjackings down 83%. In response to that specific pushback, Pritzker could only muster a feeble “we don’t want the Guard on the streets”.
And this is the point at which Pritzker volunteered that a potential Guard deployment was about “other aims”. When pressed on those aims, Pritzker goes off into his stolen and/or rigged election nuttery before descending into disgusting Holocaust callbacks. O’Keefe does nothing to check Pritzker or otherwise challenge his claims. In fact, O’Keefe enables him by moving on to a question on retaliatory redistricting.
It wasn’t so long ago that the mere suggestion of something not being aboveboard with American elections was considered election denialism and a dangerous threat to Democracy. Such statements with regard to the 2020 election were met with furious pushback, and with editorial “corrections” after the fact. In 2025, though, such statements no longer appear to be anathema to the public discourse or a Danger to Democracy. Something is clearly (D)ifferent.
Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned segment as aired on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, August 31st, 2025:
ED O'KEEFE: On Friday, we traveled to Chicago and sat down with Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. He invited us there in advance of the expanded federal presence Secretary Noem was just talking about. Here's what he told us.
J.B. PRITZKER: We hope that they don't send any troops along with ICE. And, if they do, they'll be in court pretty quickly, because that is illegal. Posse Comitatus does not allow U.S. troops into U.S. cities to do – you know, to fight crime, to be involved in law enforcement. That's not their job.
O'KEEFE: If they're doing federal immigration work, a judge might say, if they're protecting those federal agents, that's OK. I mean, you'll just fight that in court as long as you can?
PRITZKER: Well, National Guard troops, any kind of troops on the streets of an American city don't belong, unless there is an insurrection, unless there is truly an emergency. There is not.
O'KEEFE: Have you been briefed by anyone in the administration about these plans?
PRITZKER: No one in the administration, the president, or anybody under him, has called anyone in my administration or – and me – have not called the city of Chicago or anyone else. So it's clear that, in secret, they're planning this – well, it's an invasion with U.S. troops, if they, in fact, do that. The other thing is, you know, they ought to be coordinating with local law enforcement. They ought to let us know when they're coming, where they're coming, if it's ICE or if it's ATF or whoever it is. But they don't want to do that either. And I must say, it's disruptive. It's dangerous. It tends to inflame passions on the ground when they don't let us know what their plans are and when we can't coordinate with them.
O'KEEFE: The president has had some things to say about the Windy City several times in recent days.
DONALD TRUMP: Next should be Chicago, because, as you all know, Chicago is a killing field right now.
Everybody knows Chicago is a hellhole right now. Everybody knows it.
PRITZKER: You know, he wakes up in the morning and whatever whim strikes him is what he apparently says. And recently, I guess I have been living rent-free in his head. Chicago apparently is living rent-free in his head, even though, on other days he'll talk about Baltimore, he'll talk about New York. Notice he never talks about where the most violent crime is occurring, which is in red states. Illinois is not even in the bottom half of states in terms of violent crime. But do you hear him talking about Florida, where he is now from? No, you don't hear him talking about that, or Texas. Their violent crime rates are much worse in other places. And we're very proud of the work that we've done. And we want more help. You know what kind of help we want? Civilian law enforcement help. We would like ATF agents to help us take more guns off the streets. We would like FBI, again, to coordinate with our local law enforcement to help catch perpetrators of crimes. If they would do that, we would welcome that. But that's not what they're planning to do.
O'KEEFE: So, bottom line, would more federal agents in Chicago, assisting local law enforcement help deter crime right now?
PRITZKER: Of course. You want to help us catch bad guys? Help – bring the FBI. Bring the ATF. We already coordinate with them, by the way. We do a lot of work with them. We do some – we do drug interdiction, we do fighting gangs, and we do, you know, interdiction of guns at the borders.
O'KEEFE: Part of the reason I ask about the potential for federal deployments to help right now is that, according to a CBS News data analysis of what's gone on in Washington just in the last few weeks, well, crime there as well was down, and in most cases down double digits. It's down nearly 50 percent in the three weeks since the National Guard moved in, assaults down 41 percent, homicides down 69 percent, robbery down 63 percent, and the mayor concedes carjacking, which had become a bigger problem, down 83 percent since the federal agents showed up. So this kind of deployment he's set up in Washington that he says he wants to do in other cities, at least in Washington, is showing potential success. And what I hear you saying is, well, sure, if they show up, it might help us too?
PRITZKER: I'm saying we don't want troops on the streets of American cities.
O'KEEFE: Right.
PRITZKER: That's un-American. And, frankly, the president of the United States ought to know better. This one doesn't seem to. He hasn't read any books. He doesn't seem to understand the Constitution or the laws.
O'KEEFE: But if he just sends the FBI, the ATF, DEA…
PRITZKER: They're – yes, they're here already.
O'KEEFE: … and sends more of them?
PRITZKER: We have some working with us now. Would love more help. You know what else he's doing? He's cutting funds that help us to fight violent crime from the federal government.
O'KEEFE: Give me an example of how those cuts have affected the ability to fight crime in Chicago.
PRITZKER: So, let me just tell you what happened in Illinois when we had a Republican governor and he cut funding for programs that helped prevent crime. What happened was we, saw a significant increase in crime. Donald Trump is now doing the same thing. He's taking away federal funding for those programs which are so important to us. We've increased funding at the state level, but we need that federal funding. It's on top of that. One more thing. The business community in the city of Chicago got together and put $100 million forward to help us, back in 2022, to help us to fight crime through these prevention programs. It's working. Crime is down. I mean, murders are down 50 percent in the city of Chicago. And you can go through every statistic. Almost everything is much better as a result of that work. Donald Trump is trying to take that money away. And he isn't listening to the business community here. He isn't listening to the clergy here. He isn't listening to people on the ground, Republicans here who understand that putting troops on the city of Chicago's streets is going to cause more problems than he understands.
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.
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.
O'KEEFE: I hear you talking about invasion. I hear you – him about – I hear you talking about him suspending elections. Is it your belief he's an authoritarian?
PRITZKER: Look, I can tell you this. I built a Holocaust museum. I know what the history was of a constitutional republic being overturned after an election in 53 days. And I'm very, very concerned. We could talk about lots of authoritarian regimes in the world, but that just happens to be the one that I know. And I can tell you that – that the playbook is the same. It's thwart the media. It's create mayhem that requires military interdiction. These are things that happened throughout history. And Donald Trump is just following that playbook.
O'KEEFE: Is there any chance Illinois redraws its congressional lines before next year's midterm elections?
PRITZKER: That's not something that I want to do. It's not something that any of us want to do. But I have to say, if Donald Trump is going to force his will on the American people by going to his MAGA allies in various states and have them – having them redraw in the middle of a decade, when you're supposed to be doing it right after a census, with a year ending in 1, not a year ending in 5, if he's going to do that all over the country, I think all of us have to think about what it is that we can do to counter that.
O'KEEFE: What much – what much more could you do, though, as an Illinois Democrat? I mean, your map already gets an F from most good government groups for being gerrymandered. Would you wipe out all the Republican districts?
PRITZKER: Yes, it is possible to have more Democratic districts in the state of Illinois, and we – we could do it. Like I said, it's not something that I want to do.
O'KEEFE: We’ll be right back.
