February 03, 2026 02:43 PM UTC

Donald Trump Has Probably Lost His Mind, Tina Peters Edition

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• by: Colorado Pols

Via 9NEWS’ Kyle Clark, we learn more about an interview of President Donald Trump by his former deputy director of the FBI now back on the podcast beat Dan Bongino yesterday, an interview which has made headlines for Trump’s less than small-d democratic suggestion that Republicans should “take over the voting” in locations where he believes the elections were stolen from him back in 2020.

For those of us who have followed the saga of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who went to prison for her role in a cockamamie plot to access secure voting machines in a failed attempt to prove Trump right, yesterday’s interview packed revelations almost as shocking: Trump for the first time directly stated that the “harsh measures” he promised if Peters isn’t released from Colorado state prison have indeed been implemented, an admission Coloradans hardly needed as the closures and cuts have piled up.

But then Trump launched into an explanation of Peters’ case that has left everyone who heard it, including Peters’ most devoted defenders, scratching their heads:

TRUMP: You’re going to see some interesting things come out. But like the 2020 election, I won that election by so much. Everybody [knows] it. They put a woman in jail, Colorado, put a woman in jail, a wonderful woman, 72 years old, had cancer because she was a voting inspector. She was in charge of a voting error, and she saw boxes of votes come in. So she went over to check it, and they put her in jail for voter manipulation, and she’s still in jail, and they better let her out fast. And they’re suffering a big price, Colorado. [Pols emphasis] They have this woman in jail who’s 71 years old and probably has cancer. She’s sick. And they put her in because she challenged somebody who was dumping ballots into a box, okay? [Pols emphasis] And they didn’t put them in jail…

Folks, we don’t have any earthly idea what Trump is talking about. No one knows what Trump is talking about, because his description of the Tina Peters case contains absolutely zero factual information. This isn’t a difference of opinion. Tina Peters never “challenged somebody who was dumping ballots into a box.” That’s simply not what anyone claims took place, including Tina Peters herself. As far as we know, this does not describe any case prosecuted stemming from the 2020 presidential election. These comments are obviously of no help to Peters’ legal defense, as anyone who has read a single story about the Peters case knows Trump isn’t even remotely describing it.

When you consider the ramifications of this frank admission of Trump’s corrupt motive for the many actions his adminstration has taken against Colorado, followed by these totally nonsensical claims about Peters’ crimes–claims Dan Bongino knew were nonsense, but out of deference to the Dear Leader made no attempt to correct–the question for us goes well beyond how Republicans like Gabe Evans can continue to justify Trump’s campaign of retaliation against Colorado, which has cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars and an inestimable number of jobs, as a “policy conversation.”

The question now is how much longer Republicans, who are the only ones with the power to intervene, can let this madness continue.