The Democrats are going postal on President Trump.
“We will save the post office,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, declared at the Democratic National Convention. “Remember in 2016 when Trump asked: ‘What do you have to lose?’” said Hillary Clinton, the president’s vanquished opponent from four years ago, in her own speech at the event. “Well, now we know: our health, our jobs, even our lives, our leadership in the world, and, yes, our post office.” Former President Barack Obama said Trump is trying to “kneecap” the Postal Service.
Stories are circulating about disappearing mailboxes, delayed deliveries, nearly 5,000 dead chickens being sent to Maine farmers, and fears about missing ballots to come. Naturally, Trump is at the center of the controversy.
“The Postal Service is a pillar of our democracy, enshrined in the Constitution and essential for providing critical services: delivering prescriptions, Social Security benefits, paychecks, tax returns, and absentee ballots to millions of Americans, including in our most remote communities,” wrote House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, in a “dear colleague” letter alleging that Trump is leading a “campaign to sabotage the election by manipulating the Postal Service to disenfranchise voters.”
“Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, one of the top Trump mega-donors, has proven a complicit crony as he continues to push forward sweeping new operational changes that degrade postal service, delay the mail, and — according to the Postal Service itself — threaten to deny the ability of eligible Americans to cast their votes through the mail in the upcoming elections in a timely fashion,” Pelosi continued. She later added, “Lives, livelihoods, and the life of our American democracy are under threat from the president.”
Congressional Democrats claim the Trump administration’s efforts to starve the Postal Service of funds needed to process mail-in ballots is the latest scandal to rock the White House during the 2020 presidential campaign. They argue that this is being done to undermine mail-in voting, consistent with Trump’s complaints about “rigged elections, indifference at best about Russian electoral interference, and various Republican vote suppression schemes.”
Exhibit A in defense of their case includes comments from the president himself. “[Democrats] want $3.5 billion for the mail-in votes, OK, universal mail-in ballots, $3.5 billion,” Trump told Maria Bartiromo on Fox News. “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. By the way, those are just two items. 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.”
Trump appeared to be conflating $25 billion in House Democratic legislation to help with the Postal Service’s long-term financial problems — the White House has said it offered $10 billion for this purpose — and the $3.5 billion for the Election Assistance Commission. A source close to the administration argued that Democrats are themselves conflating postal union-opposed overtime reforms being undertaken at DeJoy’s instruction to save money with an effort to undermine mail-in voting, of which the president has made clear on numerous occasions he is not a fan. Two of the largest postal unions, the American Postal Workers Union and the National Association of Letter Carriers, have endorsed Democratic nominee Joe Biden for president.
“To avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail, I am suspending these initiatives until after the election is concluded,” DeJoy announced in a statement. He added that “mail processing equipment and blue collection boxes will remain where they are” and that “overtime has, and will continue to be, approved as needed.” The Republican National Committee’s Elizabeth Harrington compared DeJoy to former national security adviser Michael Flynn, saying, “Just like they maligned and set up a three-star general, they’re smearing the postmaster general with fraudulent theories just because he’s a Republican.” The administration’s allies point out that DeJoy was unanimously approved for his position by the USPS Board of Governors.
At deadline, the Democrat-controlled House was poised to return to Washington for a weekend vote on the $25 billion for the Postal Service. Trump has signaled he might be willing to budge on the issue as part of a larger coronavirus aid deal. And the hate mail for both parties keeps coming.
