Trump used his address to the nation to recycle debunked conspiracy theories about his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden by claiming China had somehow interfered in the election. The president also announced the declassification of documents related to those claims. However, the heavily redacted files contained information that was largely already publicly available and did little to support his claims of foreign interference and widespread voter fraud.

Slotkin told MS NOW host Nicolle Wallace that Trump’s plan to sow doubts about mail-in voting was part of a greater effort to undermine election integrity.

“The president is using an authoritarian playbook that I have seen tons of times abroad,” Slotkin said. “Where he’s sowing misinformation and disinformation about our elections because he thinks his team is gonna lose. The man has basically said, including at the State of the Union, ‘If my team loses, the system is rigged.’”

Slotkin also said that Trump is “building a case” to meddle with election results come November.

“What it tends to culminate in, this authoritarian playbook, it culminates in him creating a security incident that requires uniformed military or federal law enforcement to go to the polls, to surround polls, to collect ballots or voting machines. And I think we need to be clear-eyed about that.”

Slotkin emphasized that officials need not focus too narrowly on any one thing Trump is doing to subvert the elections, but rather look at the big picture.