David Frum, the man who once claimed Trump would turn the U.S. into a banana republic by 2021 and is still collecting a paycheck for it, has now officially graduated from “concerned pundit” to full‑blown fever‑dream conspiracy theorist, and NewsBusters is right to call him out.
The “Tinfoil Hat” Moment
On MSNBC’s Deadline: White House, Frum didn’t just warn that Trump might abuse power; he straight‑up asserted that Trump may arrest people simply to stop them from voting. This isn’t some nuanced legal analysis about executive overreach or election interference; it’s a flat, breathless claim that the president is going to round up ordinary citizens and throw them in jail because they might vote the wrong way. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect from a late‑night comedy monologue, not from a staff writer at The Atlantic who still gets introduced as a serious conservative thinker.
Frum’s entire shtick is that Trump is an existential threat to democracy, but at this point, he’s not predicting policy — he’s writing fan fiction for the Resistance. He’s not analyzing what Trump actually did or said; he’s inventing a dystopian script where Trump is a cartoon dictator who personally orders the arrest of voters, and then he treats that script as if it’s breaking news.
The Absurdity of the Claim
Let’s be clear: Trump has never proposed, much less implemented, a policy of arresting people just for voting or planning to vote. He has threatened to prosecute political opponents for alleged crimes (like Mayorkas or Mamdani), but that’s a far cry from saying “I’m going to arrest voters to stop them from voting”. Frum is taking Trump’s bluster, his legal threats, and his attacks on sanctuary cities, then warping them into a fantasy where the president is about to launch a mass arrest campaign against the electorate.
And yet, Frum delivers this as if he’s uncovering a secret plot, not as if he’s just recycling the same “Trump is Hitler” narrative he’s been selling since 2016. He’s not even pretending to engage with reality anymore; he’s just performing outrage for an audience that already believes the worst about Trump, no evidence required.
NewsBusters’ Righteous Mockery
NewsBusters’ Alex Christy is absolutely correct to label this as Frum “donning the tinfoil hat”. When a supposedly serious commentator starts claiming that a sitting president may arrest voters to stop them from voting, that’s not analysis — that’s paranoia dressed up as journalism. Christy’s piece rightly points out that Frum is no longer offering policy critique; he’s offering a paranoid fantasy that belongs on a conspiracy podcast, not on a mainstream news panel.
The fact that MSNBC lets Frum say this on air, and that The Atlantic still pays him to write it, is a damning indictment of the entire “Never Trump” pundit class. They’ve spent years telling us that Trump is an authoritarian, but now they’ve become the very thing they claim to oppose: purveyors of fear, misinformation, and authoritarian panic, all to keep their own jobs and relevance.
The Final Verdict
So here we are: David Frum, the man who once wrote a whole Atlantic article titled “How to Build an Autocracy,” now thinks Trump is about to arrest voters to stop them from voting. He’s not citing statutes, court rulings, or executive orders; he’s just making it up and presenting it as a real possibility. And for this, he’s still getting paid, still invited on TV, still treated as a serious voice in the national conversation.
Is Frum getting paid for this level of ignorance?