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August 17, 2020 02:24 PM UTC

Goddamn Right I'm Sabotaging The Postal Service, Says Trump

  • 22 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

MONDAY UPDATE: WTF?

—–

U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.

National Public Radio reports on an admission so jaw-dropping it could only be…an average Thursday in Donald Trump’s train wreck presidency:

While President Trump has long railed against mail-in voting, falsely claiming it leads to rampant fraud, he appeared to confirm Thursday morning that he opposes Democrats’ proposed boost in funding for the U.S. Postal Service because he wants to make it harder to expand voting by mail…

“They [the Democrats] want three and a half billion dollars for something that’ll turn out to be fraudulent — that’s election money basically,” Trump said.

Continued the president: “They want $25 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, in the meantime, they aren’t getting there. But if they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it.” [Pols emphasis]

First of all, there is no proposal for “universal mail-in voting” at the federal level. For all the discussion about migrating to a mail ballot system during the COVID-19 pandemic, only two additional states have switched to primarily mail ballots in addition to the six states including Colorado that already conduct mail ballot elections.

Trump’s characteristically frank admission that he opposes more money for the U.S. Postal Service because he doesn’t want USPS to be able to handle mail ballots is fully consistent with the reports of new policies within the Postal Service that are slowing down the delivery of mail across the country–policies put in place by Trump’s newly appointed postmaster general Louis DeJoy, a campaign donor and supporter. Taken together, these clearly point to an agenda by the Trump administration to deliberately harm the USPS–and blame any resultant election chaos on the mail ballots Trump is determined without evidence to vilify in advance for his expected defeat at the polls in November.

As you can imagine, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold is pretty upset…

 

Donald Trump, more or less daily.

Ballots go out in enough time in Colorado to account for any reasonable delay that might occur in delivery to voters. Like we noted yesterday, a very high percentage of Colorado voters use secure drop boxes provided by counties to return their mail ballots–which could work in our favor to the extent that Trump succeeds in disrupting mail service in the weeks before the election. Above all Colorado voters know that mail ballots work, or at least have worked, year after year, without any significant trouble while driving Colorado’s rate of voter participation to historic heights.

What we have today is a President actively working to sabotage one of the nation’s oldest and most trusted institutions for personal political advantage. Trump’s eagerness to admit to the moral worst-case scenario in any situation–like asking his “people” to “slow the testing down, please”–has robbed his apologists of their excuses. It surely ranks among the worst known misdeeds of any modern American President, Watergate included, and it is only Trump’s unprecedented disregard for any moral or legal constraint that prevents the public from catching its breath and realizing how bad this really is.

When Trump floated postponing the election over his fictitious concerns about mail ballots, Sen. Cory Gardner spoke up to condemn the idea–but not to defend the mail ballots Colorado used to elect Gardner in 2014. Gardner’s evasions when asked to reconcile his support for Colorado’s mail ballots with Trump’s disparagement of them are not going to work forever, especially if Trump’s subversion of the Postal Service to sabotage mail ballots continues.

For every Colorado voter who knows better, and that’s every Colorado Republican, a fateful moment is approaching.

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22 thoughts on “Goddamn Right I’m Sabotaging The Postal Service, Says Trump”

  1. Couple points: on his MSNBC show last night, Lawrence O’Donnell interviewed a high ranking postal union person from Iowa. She said that they WILL deliver all election ballots, but cautioned not to wait until the last possible minute. 

    Another news item from Ohio: the Republican Secretary of State issued a rule that counties can have only one ballot drop box per county, and only at the Board of Elections office. Real question as to that being legal.

    1. If I were the county clerk in a Dem-leaning county I'd put a bunch of boxes out and wait for the Secretary of State to sue me. Let the Republican counties put out a single box…

  3. As usual Colorado Pols is not telling the whole truth. Not all mail ballot laws are created equal. In California they can harvest unlimited numbers of ballots. It's ripe for fraud, and Colorado's system is not. How is that so hard to understand?

    3. @Moderatus: you have a credible source for your California statement? By "credible," I don't mean Hannity, Carlson, Ingraham, Pirro, Levin, Lou Dobbs, Newsmax, Breitbart, InfoWars, or QAnon. 

    4. WTF does harvest unlimited number of ballots mean Nutlid?  I have several family members who use the California system and it’s practically identical to ours with one exception: you can drop your ballot in the mail on Election Day and as long as it’s postmarked with the date it’s still counted. 

  4. Its still only August and all manner of Trump shitbaggery like this is going on already.  This is going to be the messiest Presidential election in American history.

    1. Couldn’t they have given this disingenuous, lying asshole an Ambassador appointment instead of putting him at USPS? 

      From June 15 (which kind of seems like a decade ago):

      Top Republican fundraiser and Trump ally named postmaster general, giving president new influence over Postal Service

      “Louis DeJoy understands the critical public service role of the United States Postal Service, and the urgent need to strengthen it for future generations,” Robert M. Duncan, chairman of the board of governors, said in a statement.

      “Postal workers are the heart and soul of this institution, and I will be honored to work alongside them and their unions,” DeJoy, who will start June 15, said in a statement.

      1. it would be a bit awkward … DeJoy's spouse is already nominated as Ambassador to Canada.

        Nomination timeline

        Feb. 11, 2020  Appointment announced

        Feb. 25, 2020  Referred to Foreign Relations committee

        July 29, 2020  Reported out favorably

        Awaiting full Senate action

    2. DeJoy’s conflicts of interest will be part of the investigation when he testifies under oath September 17.
      Postal Service  Inspector General Tammy Whitcomb was asked in a letter to audit the destruction DeJoy has wreaked.

       

      But what it’s going to take to keep our postal services is hundreds of thousands of people in the streets. Elders using walkers, veterans in wheelchairs, all the Americans who depend on the mail to deliver medicine, checks, vital supplies, demanding that services be maintained and improved. 
       

      Trump’s also going to lose his lawsuit against ballot drop boxes in PA, I think – in time for the election? Who knows? But it’s a nuisance lawsuit, without merit.  
       

      Meanwhile, other states are putting ballot drop boxes in place pre-emptively. Ohio is limiting drop boxes to one per county, but won’t eliminate them. 
       

       

      1. No problem, kwtree, he'll just fire that I.G., too. He's been taking out about one a week. The new Congress will start meeting in informal committees and prepping the investigations as soon as they're elected. I doubt they'll wait 'til January 3rd. 

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