President Donald Trump has gone on what seems like a never-ending stream of tirades against mail-in voting, which he claims is full of opportunities for fraud, despite the abject lack of evidence underpinning his claims. This Tuesday, while speaking at a White House press conference, Trump threateningly claimed that if “universal mail-in voting” is used, then the general election might even have to be thrown out and redone — which is an entirely baseless claim but helps reveal just how wildly desperate that the president really is heading into November.
‘The Democrats want to make it a political issue. It’s not a political issue, it’s really about a correct vote. You have to get voting right. You can’t have millions and millions of ballots sent all over the place, sent to people that are dead, sent to dogs, cats. Sent to everyone. This is a serious situation, this isn’t games, and you have to get it right. I just want to get it right. Win, lose, or draw — I think I’m going to win — win, lose, or draw, we have to get it right.’
There is no apparent evidence that a single ballot has been sent to a dog or a cat. Trump appears to be pulling these claims out of thin air, and yet, he somehow still expects people to take him seriously.
He continued:
‘You can’t take millions of ballots, send them haphazardly all over the country, or all over a state, and expect it to come out properly… By the way, absentee is great, it’s been working for a long time like in Florida. Absentee, you request and it comes in, and then you send it back. Absentee is great, but universal is going to be a disaster the likes of which our country has never seen. It’ll end up being a rigged election or they will never come out with an outcome. They’ll have to do it again, and nobody wants that, and I don’t want that.’
Watch his comments in the video below:
First of all — “universal” mail-in voting is not and has never been set to be used across the entire country, although Trump seems keen on leveraging claims about “universal mail-in voting” against “mail-in voting” as a whole. Universal or at least almost universal mail-in voting has, however, already been used in five states, and while not universal, mail-in voting has also been used at significantly high rates elsewhere in the country, too.
More acutely — there is not a single shred of evidence for Trump’s claim that the entire presidential election may have to be thrown out because of election issues. His claim to that effect mirrors nonsensical claims that he made around the time of the 2016 election. He claimed that millions of illegal ballots were cast in that election, which there has never been a shred of evidence for.
It’s all conspiratorial, paranoid ranting from a person who might realize that his time in the White House might soon be coming to an end, especially if a majority of Americans truly get the chance to make their voices heard.
