07/30/20
Trump refuses to back down on suggestion of election delay
The president asserts that large numbers of mail-in ballots amid the coronavirus pandemic might mean “you never even know who won the election.”
President Donald Trump on Thursday refused to back down from his suggestion earlier in the day that the November general election be postponed, repeating unsubstantiated predictions of widespread voter fraud amid the coronavirus pandemic and saying that large numbers of mail-in ballots might mean “you never even know who won the election.”
The president’s extraordinary proposal, which he is not constitutionally empowered to enforce, represented his first attempt at floating a suspension of the election less than 100 days away.
“With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history,” Trump wrote on Twitter in the morning. “It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”
Hours later, he appeared to launch a partial clean-up of the suggestion after it was roundly rejected by members of his own party.
“Glad I was able to get the very dishonest LameStream Media to finally start talking about the RISKS to our Democracy from dangerous Universal Mail-In-Voting” Trump said Thursday afternoon, reiterating that he “totally” supports absentee voting.
The president added that in his view it was imperative to find out who won the election on election night, “not days, months, or even years later,” as some election experts have indeed warned that a drastic surge in mail-in ballots might mean a close race isn’t called on the evening of Nov. 3.
He also vowed that he would win the 2020 election, despite recent polling suggesting trouble for the president.
He reiterated those views in a coronavirus briefing at the White House later,
ignoring multiple opportunities to walk back his proposal but insisting that he didn’t want to see the election delayed.
“Do I want to see a day change? No. But I don’t want to see a crooked election,” he told reporters, asserting without evidence that a 2020 election in which large swaths of voters cast their ballots by mail would be “the most rigged election in history.”
“I don't want to see an election — you know, so many years I've been watching elections,” Trump added. “And they say the projected winner or the winner of the election. I don't want to see that take place in a week after Nov. 3 or a month or, frankly, with litigation and everything else that could happen, in years, years, or you never even know who won the election.”
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