{"id":150309,"date":"2026-05-04T13:13:40","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T21:13:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/05\/04\/todd-blanche-goes-on-tv-to-defend-voter-id-and-accidentally-reveals-he-has-never-been-to-a-restaurant\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T13:13:40","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T21:13:40","slug":"todd-blanche-goes-on-tv-to-defend-voter-id-and-accidentally-reveals-he-has-never-been-to-a-restaurant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/05\/04\/todd-blanche-goes-on-tv-to-defend-voter-id-and-accidentally-reveals-he-has-never-been-to-a-restaurant\/","title":{"rendered":"Todd Blanche Goes On TV To Defend Voter ID And Accidentally Reveals He Has Never Been To A Restaurant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Todd Blanche had quite the Meet the Press appearance over the weekend. In between giving James Comey\u2019s legal team <\/a>a lot to look at, the Acting Attorney General of the United States offered a defense of voter ID laws, which, um, maybe didn\u2019t go as well as he planned. Blanche told Kristen Welker, \u201cLike every time you walk into a restaurant or a club, you have to show your ID. How about you have to show your ID to vote? That\u2019s not anything that\u2019s crazy. And that\u2019s what we should be talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n

I shouldn\u2019t have to say this out loud in the year of our lord 2026, but restaurants do not card you to walk in the door.<\/p>\n

Bars do. Venues that serve alcohol do, sometimes. Strip clubs, famously, do. But a restaurant? The place where you go to eat food? Nobody is checking ID at the hostess stand. You just\u2026 walk in. You sit down. A server takes your order. It is one of the more accessible things you can do in American life, which is presumably why there are over one million of them.<\/p>\n

The internet noticed immediately, and did the thing the internet does the best.<\/p>\n

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Blanche depending perhaps too heavily on the support of those who have never actually been in a restaurant before.<\/p>\n

\u2014 David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf.bsky.social)<\/a> 2026-05-04T02:44:09.393Z<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

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A friend asks: \u201cHas it occurred to anyone that the MAGAs think you have to show IDs at restaurants because they\u2019ve been eating all their meals at strip clubs? This isn\u2019t even an unreasonable theory\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social)<\/a> 2026-05-03T15:27:15.447Z<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

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When your argument for passing the SAVE Act is that you have to show your ID to get into a restaurant, there’s a 100% chance you’re trying to rig the midterm elections by suppressing the vote of millions of Americans. Like John Mitchell, Todd Blanche is going to end up in prison.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Bill Madden (@maddenifico.bsky.social)<\/a> 2026-05-03T19:45:55.721Z<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

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Seriously, what kind of “restaurants” has Todd Blanche been going to?Also, I missed the part where going to a restaurant was a Constitutionally protected right.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Patric Reynolds (@patricjreynolds.bsky.social)<\/a> 2026-05-04T04:30:28.835Z<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

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Starting to think the drinking problem might not be limited to the FBI Director\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2014 Joe Patrice (@joepatrice.bsky.social)<\/a> 2026-05-03T15:13:32.425Z<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Here is the thing, though: Blanche did not come up with this on his own. He\u2019s mimicking his boss, again<\/a>. President Donald Trump, has been making equally baffling analogies about everyday commerce and identification requirements since at least 2018. Trump has repeatedly claimed<\/a> when pushing voter ID laws that Americans need to show photo ID at grocery stores, incorrectly saying in at least three instances that consumers needed to show ID to buy bread or cereal. When then-press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to explain this, she suggested Trump was referring to buying beer or wine. Three months later, Trump clarified that he was in fact talking about a box of cereal. <\/a>In 2023, the president claimed identification was needed to buy a loaf of bread. Just last November, he upgraded the claim: speaking to Republican senators at a White House breakfast, Trump said, \u201cAll we want is voter ID. You go to a grocery store, you have to give ID. You go to a gas station, you give ID.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Blanche\u2019s restaurant theory is, if anything, a lateral move from the established canon of Trump-world voter ID analogies. The president covers grocery stores and gas stations; the Acting AG has expanded the universe to include sit-down dining. Together, they are painting a picture of an administration that appears to have very limited personal experience with ordinary retail transactions.<\/p>\n

What makes Blanche\u2019s version particularly special, though, is the specificity. He didn\u2019t just say restaurants \u2014 he said restaurants and clubs<\/em>. Which is an interesting choice of words for a man who, reportedly<\/a>, has been trying since February to join the Metropolitan Club, one of Washington\u2019s oldest and most exclusive private clubs, and is currently being blocked by at least six members who have written to the board of directors to object. A man who thinks TGI Fridays checks your ID before seating you might not fully grasp why six members of one of Washington\u2019s oldest institutions are writing letters to keep him out.<\/p>\n

But back to the restaurants. The voter ID-via-hostess-stand theory is not just factually wrong, it is also a little revealing. This is an administration that has spent considerable energy arguing that voting should be harder, more restricted, and more heavily policed\u2026 and the best real-world analogy its top law enforcement official can muster is a thing that does not actually happen. The premise of the whole argument, that requiring ID is simply the normal, universal American experience, collapses the moment you point out that you can walk into an Applebee\u2019s without so much as a library card.<\/p>\n

For what it\u2019s worth, Blanche is not new to saying things on television that don\u2019t survive contact with reality. This is the same man who went on CNN last fall<\/a> to float the theory that people who heckled Donald Trump at a restaurant might constitute a RICO enterprise, suggesting that a statute designed to dismantle the Gambino crime family could apply to some women who yelled at the president over dinner. So maybe adding to his portfolio the bold claim that American restaurants check ID at the door is just the next evolution. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The post Todd Blanche Goes On TV To Defend Voter ID And Accidentally Reveals He Has Never Been To A Restaurant<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTodd Blanche (Photo by Valerie Plesch\/Bloomberg via Getty Images)\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Todd Blanche had quite the Meet the Press appearance over the weekend. In between giving James Comey\u2019s legal team <\/a>a lot to look at, the Acting Attorney General of the United States offered a defense of voter ID laws, which, um, maybe didn\u2019t go as well as he planned. Blanche told Kristen Welker, \u201cLike every time you walk into a restaurant or a club, you have to show your ID. How about you have to show your ID to vote? That\u2019s not anything that\u2019s crazy. And that\u2019s what we should be talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n

I shouldn\u2019t have to say this out loud in the year of our lord 2026, but restaurants do not card you to walk in the door.<\/p>\n

Bars do. Venues that serve alcohol do, sometimes. Strip clubs, famously, do. But a restaurant? The place where you go to eat food? Nobody is checking ID at the hostess stand. You just\u2026 walk in. You sit down. A server takes your order. It is one of the more accessible things you can do in American life, which is presumably why there are over one million of them.<\/p>\n

The internet noticed immediately, and did the thing the internet does the best.<\/p>\n

Here is the thing, though: Blanche did not come up with this on his own. He\u2019s mimicking his boss, again<\/a>. President Donald Trump, has been making equally baffling analogies about everyday commerce and identification requirements since at least 2018. Trump has repeatedly claimed<\/a> when pushing voter ID laws that Americans need to show photo ID at grocery stores, incorrectly saying in at least three instances that consumers needed to show ID to buy bread or cereal. When then-press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to explain this, she suggested Trump was referring to buying beer or wine. Three months later, Trump clarified that he was in fact talking about a box of cereal. In 2023, the president claimed identification was needed to buy a loaf of bread. Just last November, he upgraded the claim: speaking to Republican senators at a White House breakfast, Trump said, \u201cAll we want is voter ID. You go to a grocery store, you have to give ID. You go to a gas station, you give ID.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Blanche\u2019s restaurant theory is, if anything, a lateral move from the established canon of Trump-world voter ID analogies. The president covers grocery stores and gas stations; the Acting AG has expanded the universe to include sit-down dining. Together, they are painting a picture of an administration that appears to have very limited personal experience with ordinary retail transactions.<\/p>\n

What makes Blanche\u2019s version particularly special, though, is the specificity. He didn\u2019t just say restaurants \u2014 he said restaurants and clubs<\/em>. Which is an interesting choice of words for a man who, reportedly<\/a>, has been trying since February to join the Metropolitan Club, one of Washington\u2019s oldest and most exclusive private clubs, and is currently being blocked by at least six members who have written to the board of directors to object. A man who thinks TGI Fridays checks your ID before seating you might not fully grasp why six members of one of Washington\u2019s oldest institutions are writing letters to keep him out.<\/p>\n

But back to the restaurants. The voter ID-via-hostess-stand theory is not just factually wrong, it is also a little revealing. This is an administration that has spent considerable energy arguing that voting should be harder, more restricted, and more heavily policed\u2026 and the best real-world analogy its top law enforcement official can muster is a thing that does not actually happen. The premise of the whole argument, that requiring ID is simply the normal, universal American experience, collapses the moment you point out that you can walk into an Applebee\u2019s without so much as a library card.<\/p>\n

For what it\u2019s worth, Blanche is not new to saying things on television that don\u2019t survive contact with reality. This is the same man who went on CNN last fall<\/a> to float the theory that people who heckled Donald Trump at a restaurant might constitute a RICO enterprise, suggesting that a statute designed to dismantle the Gambino crime family could apply to some women who yelled at the president over dinner. So maybe adding to his portfolio the bold claim that American restaurants check ID at the door is just the next evolution. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Todd Blanche had quite the Meet the Press appearance over the weekend. In between giving James Comey\u2019s legal team a lot to look at, the Acting Attorney General of the United States offered a defense of voter ID laws, which, um, maybe didn\u2019t go as well as he planned. Blanche told Kristen Welker, \u201cLike every […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":150310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/todd-blanche-GettyImages-2272944292-fPm0wI.jpg?fit=594%2C396&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}