On Thursday, during an early morning interview on Fox News, President Donald Trump suggested that he was opposed to delivering funding for the Post Office specifically in order to slow down the processing of mail-in ballots. The revelation was the latest front in the GOP campaign against the Post Office, which lately has been led by the newly appointed, Trump-allied Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who has, among other operations changes, cancelled overtime opportunities for hundreds of thousands of Postal Service employees. Now, the progressive veterans group VoteVets has come out with a new video ad hammering Trump over his “war” against the Postal Service.
Delays at the Post Office have, of course, negative ramifications beyond those tied to mail-in voting. Mail-in ballots are far from the only crucial items that get sent through the system. In the new VoteVets ad, a narrator says:
‘After five draft deferments and bone spur excuses, Donald Trump has finally gone to war with the U.S. Postal Service — yeah, the Post Office, the one that American troops have relied on for over two hundred years to bring news from home and deliver our absentee ballots safely back home, and when our service was through, to deliver life-saving prescriptions on time from the VA… Donald Trump knows if the mail delivers ballots to America’s veterans, we’ll deliver a message right back: you lose.’
Check out the ad below:
After five draft deferments Donald Trump has finally found a war he wants to fight – against the USPS!
If he had served, he'd know veterans rely on the USPS for voting, medication, and employment.
We take this VERY personally, and so should you. #TrumpYouLose pic.twitter.com/PjKPctrX3O
— VoteVets (@votevets) August 13, 2020
Although Trump did not directly appoint the current Postmaster General, and he does not control policy at the Post Office directly, he does most definitely have a say in issues like whether or not the funding gets to the Post Office that they need in order to secure their operations amidst the Coronavirus pandemic. During his Thursday morning Fox interview, he said:
‘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… But if they don’t get those two items that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting.’
Trump this morning why he won’t fund US Postal Service. “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 … But if they don’t get those two items that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting.” pic.twitter.com/73NBmSnoNC
— The Recount (@therecount) August 13, 2020
The campaign of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has been among those to condemn the president’s machinations. The Biden campaign said:
‘The President of the U.S. 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.’
Biden campaign: "The President of the U.S. 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."
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) August 13, 2020
Check out Twitter’s response to the new VoteVets ad below:
