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Trump says he doesn’t want to fund Postal Service because there’s ‘nothing wrong’ with in-person voting amid pandemic

US president Donald Trump departs an event titled "Kids First: Getting America's Children Safely Back to School" 12 August 2020 in the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, DC: (2020 Getty Images)
US president Donald Trump departs an event titled "Kids First: Getting America's Children Safely Back to School" 12 August 2020 in the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, DC: (2020 Getty Images)

President Donald Trump told Fox Business on Thursday that he is opposed to the Democrats‘ plan to fund mail-in voting and the US Postal Service (USPS) because “there is nothing wrong with getting out and voting.”

Officials from both the Democratic and Republican parties have called for voting by mail to be implemented for November’s presidential election, due to logistical concerns around the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The US is still attempting to deal with the crisis, and according to a tracking project hosted by Johns Hopkins University, in the US as a whole, some 5.2 million people have tested positive for coronavirus, while the death toll has reached at least 166,148.

Speaking to Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo on Thursday morning, the president claimed that it is safe to vote in person in November, and said: “There’s nothing wrong with getting out and voting. They voted during World War I and World War II.”

Mr Trump revealed on Wednesday that Democrats are asking for $3.5bn (£2.6bn) to facilitate universal mail-in voting and $25bn (£19bn) to fund the USPS ahead of November’s presidential election.

The service has been badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic and lost $2.2bn (£1.6bn) between March and June, causing its postmaster general Louis DeJoy to ask Congress for financial support.

However, the president has refused to give the service additional funding and has repeatedly claimed that mail-in voting will lead to widespread fraud in November’s election.

During the interview Mr Trump also said that the Democrats need the USPS funding “in order to make the post office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots.

“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. They don’t have the money to do the universal mail-in voting. So therefore, they can’t do it, I guess.”

Mr Trump added: “Therefore, they can’t do the universal mail-in vote. It’s very simple. How are they going to do it if they don’t have the money to do it?”

Mr Trump has repeatedly spoken publicly against people being able to vote by mail in this year’s presidential election and has claimed without evidence that it will cause a large increase in voting fraud.

After months of criticising mail-in voting, the president told Chris Wallace of Fox News in late July that he might not accept a losing result in November’s presidential election, because “mail-in voting is going to rig” it.

The week prior, Mr Trump also tweeted without proof: “Mail-In Ballot fraud found in many elections. People are just now seeing how bad, dishonest and slow it is.

“Election results could be delayed for months. No more big election night answers? One per cent not even counted in 2016. Ridiculous!”

In May, the president also falsely claimed that mail-in voting will enable “thousands of forgeries,” despite voting by mail in Florida himself in March for the Republican primary.

On Thursday, a spokesman for Joe Biden’s campaign accused the president of carrying-out “an assault on our democracy and economy,” after his interview on Fox Business.

“The President of the United States is sabotaging a basic service that hundreds of millions of people rely upon,” Mr Biden’s campaign spokesperson Andrew Bates told Axios.

“[He is] cutting a critical lifeline for rural economies and for delivery of medicines, because he wants to deprive Americans of their fundamental right to vote safely during the most catastrophic public health crisis in over 100 years.

“This is an assault on our democracy and economy by a desperate man who’s terrified that the American people will force him to confront what he’s done everything in his power to escape for months — responsibility for his own actions.”

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