Donald Trump is facing backlash for admitting that he opposes funding for the United States Postal Service (USPS) because he does not want it used for mail-in voting for the upcoming election.
During an interview with Fox News, the president said that if USPS did not receive the $25 billion funding, which was requested by the Democrats in the stimulus proposal, they won’t be able to handle the surge of mail-in ballots that will be sent in by the American citizens.
“They want three and a half billion dollars for something that’ll turn out to be fraudulent, that’s election money basically,” Trump said. “They want three and a half billion dollars for the mail-in votes. Universal mail-in ballots. They want $25 billion, billion, for the Post Office. Now they need that money in order to make the Post Office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots.”
He added, “But if they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because you they’re not equipped to have it.”
Democrats believe that his remarks were a clear admission to trying to restrict voting rights of the American people. “The President of the United States is sabotaging a basic service that hundreds of millions of people rely upon, 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,” Andrew Bates, a spokesperson for Joe Biden, said in a statement.
The Postal Service previously said that they could handle the influx of mail-in voting that would take place due to the pandemic. “The Postal Service has ample capacity to adjust our nationwide processing and delivery network to meet projected Election and Political Mail volume, including any additional volume that may result as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the agency said in a statement.
Watch Trump’s interview below and let us know what you think.