> President Donald Trump frankly acknowledged that he’s starving the U.S. Postal Service of money to make it harder to process an expected surge of mail-in ballots, which he worries could cost him reelection.
What actually happened is a he-said-she-said situation between the Democrats and Republicans with the new covid relief bill. Democrats came in wanting $3.4 trillion dollars, Republicans aren't willing to pay that much and said "we'll talk if you bring it down to $1 trillion".
According to the Democrats, they did and the Republicans still refused to talk.
According to the Republicans, they only went down to $2 trillion and are refusing to go further.
The post office funding was only $25 billion (of which, $3.5 billion was for the mail-in ballots). Trump isn't against this. He wants the relief to mostly go to the people, not as bail-out money to the states with funding issues (which were having issues long before the pandemic, and are now just trying to use it as an excuse to get free money).
The original context of the statement everyone's railing on was just part of than explanation of the situation, not any statement of motivation.
The original audio people got in an uproar about: https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1293896544668782592 (it's 29 seconds long and there's no context, he's just explaining that the stalled bill contains the post office funding)
Here's a statement Trump made later explaining the above: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/08/13/trump-on-funding-the-p... (between 2:35 and 3:15, Trump is explaining what he's actually against - and it's not the post office)
And finally, some real reporting from just before everyone started blowing up: https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/08/12/trump-co... (and a no-paywall archive: http://archive.is/6dEi9 )
There are legitimate reasons to want a voting system to be hostile to to distance voting. The system moves from a place where anyone can verify that parts are working to one where expert specialists can - maybe - verify that parts of the system are working. It creates new points of failure where corruption can creep in. Voting systems are one of the best places to adopt a slow and conservative approach to change.
As another user was kind enough to post:
> “They need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo. “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.”
While this is part of a larger story, as another user pointed out, it does not take away from the fact that the President made his rationale clear for not wanting a functional U.S. Postal Service.
He didn't have to "say the quiet part aloud," but he did. It is an incontrovertible fact.
edit:
On top of everything, the USPS is enshrined in Article 1 of the constitution. [0]
> Power to Protect the Mails
> The postal powers of Congress embrace all measures necessary to insure the safe and speedy transit and prompt delivery of the mails.
I am just beginning to absorb this information, but at the very least, by their own inaction the US Congress is derelict of their constitutionally mandated duties, correct? If so, I believe they should be held accountable in the court of public opinion, at the very least.
Where my Originalists at?
[0] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C7-1-...
>"They want $3.5 billion for something that will turn out to be fraudulent. That’s election money, basically," Trump said during Thursday’s call-in interview.
As I wrote elsewhere, the difficulty with a large-scale increase in mail ballots does not lie with the USPS, but with states and counties without experience with mail ballots, or only with mail absentee votes, that needs to set up the infrastructure to mail them only to eligible voters and receive and process them in November. That's tough to do by early October (giving voters 30 days before Election Day).
“They need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo. “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.”
In fact Trump's rhetoric will be especially motivating for pro-Trump fraudsters who will feel morally vindicated by the endless accusations of fraud by Democrats.
This isn't about preventing fraud. Mail-in is proven to be secure. Take the words as exactly what they are--limiting votes. He directly states he wants to limit votes. There's no need to try searching around for other meanings when his statement is so direct.
[1] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/06/02/low-rates-o...
Oregon has also been 100% vote-by-mail for two decades. Other states cannot replicate Oregon's experience and infrastructure—often from scratch—by early October.
What a specious argument.