Apparently Trey Trainor has ample time on his hands, even though he's become the nation's top money-in-politics overseer as the new chairman of the Federal Election Commission.
How else to explain Trainor's latest foray into providing commentary on something having nothing at all to do with his duties as head of the agency that regulates the campaign finance rules governing presidential and congressional contests. (Truth be told, the FEC is without enough members to form the quorum required to conduct meaningful business — which does not touch election administration.)
Last month it was Trainor calling out the nation's Roman Catholic bishops for their unwillingness to violate federal law governing tax-exempt organizations and endorse candidates in an election he likened to a "spiritual war" — starting with his political mentor, President Trump for reelection.
In that case, Trainor was responding to an interviewer's questions. But now he's written a piece for the National Review, one of the nation's premier conservative journals, echoing Trump in railing against the evils of absentee ballots as the gateway to voting fraud — claims for which there's a complete absence of evidence.
In the column, published Monday, Trainor sought to somehow connect his views to his new job with this opening sentence: "As chairman of the U.S. Federal Election Commission, I've read with growing concern the recent number of stories concerning 'vote-by-mail.'"
Confirmed in May after a career as an election lawyer in Texas, which ranks among the most restrictive states for voting remotely, Trainor warns mail-in ballots could be the focus of litigation challenging the outcome of the presidential race because they will foment "fraudulent elections on a massive scale." The simple prescription for a clean contest, he argues, is "Americans simply showing up at the polls and voting in person."
Apparently, he missed that memo about the coronavirus pandemic — or else subscribes to the view of the infected president, who before his discharge Monday night from the hospital tweeted "Don't be afraid of Covid."
His first stumble was when he attempted to make a distinction between absentee ballots (good, he says) and mail-in ballots (very bad, he says). There is not any. Trump and other allies have sought to draw a distinction between mail-in ballots that are requested and those that are being proactively delivered to all registered voters in 10 states this fall.
His first example of the evils of the mail-in ballot was the delayed results this summer of two congressional primaries in New York. The problem there had nothing to do with fraud; officials were overwhelmed by 400,000 ballots statewide, more than 10 times the usual number, and a decent share arrived too late to be counted or were completed improperly and got discarded.
He disparaged the "all or mostly 'vote-by-mail' " elections as resulting in a "lengthy and chaotic mess," when almost totally smooth sailing has been seen in the states that conducted all their elections by mail before this year: Colorado, Oregon, Utah and Washington.
He brought up the case of a former Philadelphia congressman who was charged with bribing an election judge — a case that had nothing to do with mailed votes.
He cited this summer's case of a West Virginia postal carrier, saying he pleaded guilty to voter fraud after changing the political affiliation on multiple mail-in ballots. In fact, he altered eight applications from people hoping to vote absentee in the primaries.
Another example was the infamous voter registration form sent to a cat. Funny, yes, but not connected to voting by mail.
His examples that may actually involve absentee ballots — nine discarded envelopes in Pennsylvania and several hundred being investigated in New Jersey — only make the point that this form of election fraud is extremely rare.
There's one thing Trainor gor totally correct: "As chairman of the Federal Election Commission, I take this seriously, even though it falls outside the jurisdiction of the agency to enforce."
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.