Trump Makes It Official: He’s Sabotaging the Post Office to Rig the Election

Republicans will let him manipulate the federal agency with impunity because they believe it’ll rig their elections, too.

Doug Mills/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

The outbreak of the coronavirus in the United States has devastated the Postal Service. But as the threat of bankruptcy looms over one of the country’s most critical institutions—a crisis that has already sparked widespread delays and deep concerns that mail-in voting will be jeopardized in November—President Trump is exacerbating the issue in an effort to increase his odds of reelection. If earlier in the pandemic that strategy seemed a bit abstract, this week, we’ve seen him repeatedly admit to it.

“They don’t have the money to do the universal mail-in voting. So, therefore, they can’t do it, I guess,” Trump said at his daily coronavirus briefing on Wednesday, where he, once again, embraced the false narrative that mail-in voting leads to voter fraud.

Now here he is this morning on Fox Business. “Universal mail-in ballots. They want $25 billion dollars for the post office,” he said, referring to Democrats, who have increasingly expressed alarm that the new head of the Postal Service, a major Trump donor, seems to be carrying out the president’s plans to sabotage the agency.

“They need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take these millions and millions of ballots. But if they don’t get those two items,” Trump added, also referencing Democrats’ proposal for $3.6 billion for mail-in voting, “that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting, because they’re not equipped to have it.”

These are extraordinary admissions. During a pandemic that he and his administration have badly mismanaged, the president is refusing to restart congressional negotiations for coronavirus relief if the legislation includes emergency funding for a service that, in addition to helping society function normally, would make voting safer and more accessible at the exact moment when requests for absentee ballots are soaring. And as my colleague Pema Levy explained, when it comes to absentee ballots, the importance of timing can’t be overstated:

The number of mail-in ballots used this year will be magnitudes higher than in 2016, which puts millions of ballots at risk of not being counted. In 34 states, ballots received after Election Day—which falls on November 3, 2020—are not counted. In others, ballots need to be postmarked by Election Day, but a crippled Postal Service often fails to apply the postmark, which could result in more ballots being rejected. 

“You’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Trump said back in March while discussing voting reforms aimed at expanding access to the ballot. Here at least we get to the core rationale that’s likely governing Republican silence on the issue. They, like this president, worry that if more people are able to vote, Republicans will be less likely to win. And they’ll let Trump manipulate the Post Office with impunity—even if it means blocking financial relief during the worst economic climate since the Great Depression—because they believe it’ll rig their elections, too.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate