President Donald Trump told Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo on Thursday that he is blocking needed funds to the United States Postal Service as a way to thwart Democrats’ efforts to have mail-in voting during the 2020 presidential election.
When asked a question about giving the Post Office the resources needed to handle millions of mail-in ballots this fall, the president said he was not interested in providing the funds.
“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,” Trump said, according to CNN’s Abby Philip. “But if they don’t get those two items that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting.”
The president has regularly attacked mail-in voting, although he has made some exceptions for states such as Florida that both have mail-in voting and are run by Republican governors.
After multiple reports from around the country cropped up about severe delays in postal service delivery in recent weeks, there has been speculation that the president is intentionally ordering the Post Office to slow down ahead of the election so that he can more easily challenge mail-in ballots that are delivered late this fall.