Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, at Discovery World in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Andy Manis)
Just like he did in 2020, when he began attacking mail-in voting months before Election Day, Donald Trump appears to be laying the groundwork to once again challenge any election results he doesn’t like.
Voters all across the country have started to receive, fill out, and send back their mail ballots with roughly one month to go until Election Day. But as Nov. 5 draws closer, Republican nominee for president Donald Trump has once again taken to attacking mail-in-voting and the United States Postal Service (USPS), which is tasked with delivering millions of mail ballots.
In a Truth Social post on Sept. 15, Trump wrote that the USPS “has admitted that it is a poorly run mess that is experiencing mail loss and delays at a level never seen before.”
“With this being FACT, how can we possibly be expected to allow or trust the US Postal Service to run the 2024 Presidential Election,” he wrote. “It is not possible for them to do so. HELP!”
Notably, the postmaster general is Louis DeJoy, who was appointed to the position in 2020 by the US Postal Service Board of Governors, who were appointed by former President Donald Trump.
Then, just days later, Trump told ring-wing media personality, Wayne Allyn Root, that he may have to sue the USPS.
“We have very bad elections. We have a bad voting system. We have mail-in ballots. You know it’s very interesting, I read the other day, the post office is saying how bad it is,” Trump told Root. “And I said, you know, we ought to go to court, and we ought to bring a lawsuit, because they’re gonna lose hundreds of thousands of ballots. Maybe purposely. Or maybe just through incompetence.”
The two then went on to have a discussion where they incorrectly stated that the USPS endorsed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. In reality, the National Association of Letter Carriers, one of the unions representing letter carriers, endorsed her.
Additionally, the USPS has not “admitted” to being a mess, nor does it “run” presidential elections. What Trump is likely referring to is a recent letter from the National Association of Election Directors that the USPS responded to. In the letter, the organization expressed concerns over slow processing, lost mail, and a lack of required training for postal workers.
DeJoy, who Biden retained when he took office, responded to the letter with his own, assuring election officials that along with the rest of the USPS, he is “fully committed” to the “effective implementation of our longstanding processes and procedures designed to ensure that all ballot mail is delivered in a timely and secure manner.”
A spokesperson for the USPS added that “as demonstrated consistently in previous elections, election mail routinely outperforms our regular service performance” due to those processes and procedures.
The Director of Election Mail and Government Services responded to the organization as well in a statement saying: “We are ready to deliver. We were successful in 2020 delivering a historic volume of mail-in ballots; also in 2022 and will do so again in 2024.”
American Postal Workers Union (APWU) President Mark Dimondstein also responded to Trump’s comments.
“Trump is once again spouting lies about the Postal Service in an attempt to dissuade people from voting by mail. This is voter suppression, plain and simple,” he said. “Postal workers take seriously our commitment to serving the public – the entire public, no matter their political convictions. The public should have every confidence that postal workers will once again stand with the people and are ready to timely and securely deliver election mail again this fall.”
These comments from Trump aren’t anything new. In May, Trump told attendees of a rally in Wildwood, NJ that “mail-in voting is largely corrupt.”
And just like he did in 2020, when he began attacking mail-in voting months before Election Day, Trump appears to be laying the groundwork to once again challenge any election results he doesn’t like.
After the Democratic-led House tried to provide the USPS with an infusion of funding due to declining volume and revenue loss in the spring of 2020, Trump opposed the bill and spent much of the spring and summer attacking the Postal Service.
“Now they need money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” he told Fox Business Network host Maria Bartiromo in August of 2020. “If they don’t get the money, “you can’t have universal mail-in voting, because they’re not equipped to have it.”
“The ballots are out of control,” Trump said during a press briefing a month later. “You know it. And you know who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats know it better than anybody else.”
The next day, Trump called mail-in ballots “a whole big scam” when asked if he would accept the results of the election.
“We want to make sure the election is honest, and I’m not sure that it can be,” Trump told reporters. “I don’t know that it can be with this whole situation — unsolicited ballots. They’re unsolicited; millions being sent to everybody. And we’ll see.”
Despite his repeated claims that the election was “stolen” from him and that mail-in voting was rife with fraud and other issues, neither Trump nor his 2020 campaign have ever been able to provide any evidence to back up his claim.
According to USPS analyses, 98% of ballots were returned to election officials within three days during the 2020 election and 99.9% of ballots were delivered within seven days, a remarkable feat given the unprecedented quantity of mail-in ballots as COVID-19 ravaged its way through the US.
DeJoy also defended the integrity of the 2020 election, telling the Postal Service Board of Governors “we continue to employ a robust and proven process to ensure proper handling of all election mail.”
While Trump’s attacks aren’t anything new, the difference this year is that he has the backing of wealthy tech billionaires in spreading those lies and conspiracies about election fraud.
During a recent podcast appearance, billionaire investor Peter Thiel, who has close ties to Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, said that if the presidential election “is going to be close,” then he’s “pretty sure [Vice President] Kamala [Harris] will win because they will cheat.”
He then claimed, without any evidence, that Democrats will “steal the ballots” to assure a Harris victory.
Billionaire Elon Musk, who has agreed to lead a proposed government efficiency commission should Trump be elected, then went on to promote Thiel’s comments to his 190 million followers on X, formerly known as Twitter before Musk purchased it.
Musk also recently posted a video on X that couples lies about mail-in voting fraud with a white nationalist conspiracy theory; the video falsely claims that Democrats have purposely allowed undocumented immigrants into the United States in order to have them cast their votes illegally by mail.
Ironically, Musk himself is quietly spending millions encouraging Trump voters to vote by mail — he started America PAC, a committee devoted to promoting Trump’s candidacy, which has ramped up spending in recent weeks.
Trump’s allies have also worked to renew Republican voters’ faith in absentee voting this year. Trump himself even taped a video in June where he stated “whether you vote absentee, by mail, early in-person, or on Election Day, we are going to protect the vote.”
Lara Trump, the Republican National Committee co-chair, also told the Associated Press that “in this election cycle, Republicans will beat Democrats at their own game, by leveraging every legal tactic at our disposal based on the rules of each state.”
And although she suggested in July that the former president had learned to embrace mail-in voting, she’s also said that Trump has mulled over the idea of doing away with mail-in voting entirely if elected president.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Louis DeJoy was appointed to his position by the US Postal Service Board of Governors under former President Trump’s administration, not by Trump directly. We regret the error.
