Analysis: Trump admitted he is working to meddle in the election
“They want $3.5 billion for something that will turn out to be fraudulent, that’s election money basically. They want $3.5 trillion — billion dollars for the mail-in votes, OK, universal mail-in ballots, $3.5 trillion. They want $25 billion, billion, for the Post Office. Now they need that money in order to have the Post Office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots…
” … Now, if we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting, they just can’t have it. So, you know, sort of a crazy thing. Very interesting.”
Let’s be very, very clear about what Trump is saying here.
1) Democrats want funding in a coronavirus relief bill for the Postal Service.
2) They want that money so that the USPS can adequately deal with what is expected to be a major surge in mail-in and absentee balloting due to concerns about in-person voting spreading Covid-19.
3) Trump refuses to give them that money — or include it in any sort of deal — because, without it, there won’t be the ability for the people to cast more mail-in ballots, or — and this is really important — for election officials to effectively count them all.
So, yeah.
(And that’s putting aside the fact that in blocking the coronavirus bill because of the money allotted for the Postal Service, the President is blocking a whole lot of other things, including increased education funding and rent/mortgage assistance, that many people in the country badly need.)
This is the President of the United States purposely trying to make it harder for votes to be counted.
Why? Because he believes that mail-in balloting is ripe for fraud.
There is study after study that make this fact plain.
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How many examples did he find? Exactly 31 — out of more than 1 billion instances. 31! (That’s an infinitesimally small number). That’s not to say that each of those 31 instances of attempted voter fraud isn’t worth an investigation. We don’t want any voter fraud. But it is to say that 31 instances out of more than 1 billion is nothing anywhere close to widespread voter fraud.
What is happening here is that Trump is using the power of the executive branch to block legislation solely because of a totally fact-free belief that mail-in balloting is ripe for fraud. And because — and he said this too! — he thinks that mail-in balloting benefits Democrats.
Given all of that context, it’s very clear that Trump is working to block money for the post office because he thinks it’s his best chance to either stop or badly disrupt the way the votes will be cast and counted in this election. The American president. In his own reelection race. A race he has repeatedly suggested is “rigged” and “biased” because of the likely increase in mail-in ballots.
“This will be the greatest fraud in history,” Trump told Bartiromo of the 2020 election Thursday. “This will be the most fraudulent — this will be almost as fraudulent as Obama spying on my campaign, but not quite. This will be the greatest fraud in history.”
Trump also admitted that he was playing a role — or at least trying to play a role — in undermining the ability of voters to cast ballots and for those votes to be counted.
Which is a stunning admission — even by Trump’s standards.
