Entrepreneur Kevin O’Leary was on CNN’s NewsNight Monday, where he wiped the floor with the panel over the SAVE Act.
This bill does two simple things: It requires proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID to vote.
But you know how this goes — the usual suspects on the panel called it “voter suppression.” O’Leary cut through the noise with clean, clear logic, essentially making the point that it is stupid the United States hasn’t already implemented this before.
Leigh McGowan, a podcaster you’ve probably never heard of, sparked the debate by declaring, “I think the thing is that the SAVE Act is a voter suppression act wrapped up as a Voter Protection Act. That is not what we're doing here. We are trying to make it incredibly difficult for certain people to vote.” She went on about “nationalized elections” and the “federal government taking over what is a state's job,” invoking “states’ rights,” and lamenting that bills like the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the For the People Act had failed (even though those were actual efforts to nationalize elections). “What we’re doing here is not that,” she said. “We’re talking about having ICE around voting places. We’re talking about taking people and making them afraid.”
That has nothing to do with the SAVE Act, but I digress.
Eventually, Kevin O’Leary stepped in and did what leftists dread: He brought up facts. “This narrative has to be bipartisan by every metric,” he began. “Every 24 months, we go through this debate over and over again when every country — in the Nordic countries, in Europe, France, Switzerland, Canada, Australia — solved this problem decades ago.” He broke it down to the basics. “You've got to be a citizen to vote. You got to prove it. We all agree at the table on that one.”
Then he landed the blow. “There’s such advancement in technology to make sure there’s no cheating. We should implement it here and get all this crapola over with. It’s getting almost boring. Every 24 months, ‘Oh, the election’s rigged!’ ‘Oh, this guy’s doing this, this guy’s doing that.’ No other country has this narrative.”
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McGowan tried to defuse it with a half-joking concession. “Kevin, I agree with you. It is getting incredibly boring.”
“It’s ridiculous,” O’Leary told her.
McGowan, likely realizing the hole she’d dug, tried again: “We talk about this all the time. It’s incredibly boring. But it’s also not an actual problem. Like when you look at the statistics, voting — illegals voting — is not an actual problem in this country. You do need to show ID to be able to vote.”
That’s not actually true. Only a handful of states actually require a photo ID to vote. Nevertheless, O’Leary replied, “But you agree, if you’re not a citizen, you can’t vote.”
That forced McGowan into agreeing with the core principle of the SAVE Act. “I would agree with that,” she said, “but that’s not what the problem is. The problem is that we have 0.001% of people that are illegally voting.” She rattled off statistics from the Heritage Foundation and the Brennan Center, trying to reduce the whole issue to a rounding error and claim that the SAVE Act is somehow unnecessary.
Abby Phillip broke in again, perhaps realizing O’Leary had shifted the debate onto plain common sense. “It’s already illegal,” she reminded. McGowan echoed, “No one is doing that.”
“So why don’t you just say if you cheat and steal and you’re illegal, you go to jail?” O’Leary asked.
🚨 HOLY CRAP. Kevin O'Leary just STUNNED a leftist CNN panel by dropping straight truth on voter ID and the SAVE America Act
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) February 17, 2026
"EVERY country, Europe, France, Switzerland, Australia SOLVED this problem decades ago! A: You gotta be a CITIZEN to vote, you gotta PROVE IT!" 🔥
"Every… pic.twitter.com/PRcYC1OdGs
It’s a fair question. The left claims that fraudulent voting isn’t an actual problem, yet they fight like hell to ensure we don’t pass laws to enforce what they claim isn’t even happening. You can’t have it both ways.
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