Todd Blanche Clashes With Dana Bash Over Trump and the Alaska Senate Race

Attorney General Todd Blanche became visibly combative during a CNN interview after Dana Bash questioned whether President Donald Trump might interfere in the coming midterm elections. The exchange centered on Alaska’s Senate race and an unusual request by the Trump administration to prevent certification if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses. The administration has asked a federal court to block certification, arguing that voters could be confused because another candidate in the race shares Sullivan’s name. Officials have alleged that the second candidate was placed on the ballot to mislead Republican voters, but the article says they have not provided evidence for that claim. Trump has campaigned for the incumbent. On CNN’s State of the Union, Bash cited a Truth Social post in which Trump said Democrats were trying to “steal” the seat. She argued that the post made the issue political and asked Blanche whether he saw his role as helping Republicans retain the seat. Blanche pushed back sharply, disputing her characterization and insisting that a president should speak up when he believes something improper is happening in an election. The interview then turned to the broader question of Trump’s intentions in the 2026 midterms. Bash asked whether the president was laying the groundwork for a situation in which he might try to overturn an election result. The supplied article ends as she raises that possibility, so it does not provide Blanche’s full response to the question. Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, under which voters rank candidates and votes are redistributed as lower-ranking candidates are eliminated until one candidate has a majority of the remaining votes. The ballot is expected to include four candidates: three Republicans, including both Dan Sullivans, and former Democratic Representative Mary Peltola. The article describes the seat as important to Democrats’ chances of gaining control of the Senate. The dispute has revived concerns about election certification, six years after Trump tried unsuccessfully to halt certification of the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden. The article characterizes the administration’s request to block certification in Alaska as an extraordinary step, while reporting that Blanche and Bash argued over the issue on air.