Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart claimed on Friday’s edition of PBS News Hour that he knows the actual reason for President Trump’s response to rioting in Los Angeles and for Saturday’s Army parade in Washington. According to him, it is all part of a scheme that will eventually allow Trump to cancel elections.

Capehart recalled, “I think they're creating the political conflict because — I interviewed Minnesota State Attorney General Keith Ellison in the run-up to the anniversary, the fifth anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. And he brought up on his own the rumor that the president was going to pardon Derek Chauvin. And the attorney general said that the president might do that as a distraction to larger goals. And one of the larger goals that the attorney general mentioned that has always been in the back of my mind is to create the conditions that would allow the president to invoke the Insurrection Act.”

 

 

He continued, “And once the president invokes the Insurrection Act, all sorts of powers are handed to the president, you know, suspending elections, and other things, that, once you open that box, and particularly you open that box with this president and the administration and the yes-people he has around him, there's no going back.”

Jumping off the deep end, Capehart concluded, “That is among the reasons why I am so concerned about what we're about to see tomorrow.”

The Insurrection Act doesn’t even allow for the suspension of elections. Furthermore, there is a possibility that Saturday’s parade could be cancelled due to lightning storms, but people who aspire to cancel elections usually do not put their dictatorial plans at the mercy of the weather.

Here is a transcript for the June 13 show:

PBS News Hour

6/13/2025

7:43 PM ET

JONATHAN CAPEHART: And I think they're creating the political conflict because — I interviewed Minnesota State Attorney General Keith Ellison in the run-up to the anniversary, the fifth anniversary of the murder of George Floyd.

And he brought up on his own the rumor that the president was going to pardon Derek Chauvin. And the attorney general said that the president might do that as a distraction to larger goals. And one of the larger goals that the attorney general mentioned that has always been in the back of my mind is to create the conditions that would allow the president to invoke the Insurrection Act.

And once the president invokes the Insurrection Act, all sorts of powers are handed to the president, you know, suspending elections, and other things, that, once you open that box, and particularly you open that box with this president and the administration and the yes-people he has around him, there's no going back.

That is among the reasons why I am so concerned about what we're about to see tomorrow.