Why the Hell Is Trump “Joking” About Canceling Elections?

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt snapped Thursday at a reporter who didn’t buy her attempt to dismiss President Donald Trump’s repeated mentions of canceling elections.

During a White House press briefing, a reporter asked Leavitt why the president kept mentioning canceling elections. Trump had pointed out while speaking to Reuters that presidents never do well in the midterm elections, and bragged that because his administration has already accomplished so much, maybe the democratic process wasn’t necessary at all.

“When you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election,” Trump said. The president had made a similar remark while speaking to Republicans at the Kennedy Center last week.

“The president was simply joking,” Leavitt said. “He was saying, ‘We’re doing such a great job, we’re doing everything American people thought, maybe we should just keep rolling.’ But he was speaking facetiously.”

The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg posed a follow-up. “Are you saying the president finds the idea of cancelling elections funny?”

“Andrew, were you in the room? No you weren’t. I was in the room, I heard the conversation. And only someone like you would take that so seriously, and pose that in a question in that way,” Leavitt replied.

But Trump’s repeated threats to cancel essential democratic processes get more real all the time, as Democrats continue to gain momentum ahead of the midterm elections. Earlier Thursday, he threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, which some have speculated he could use to seize control of the states—and even suspend elections.