Even though he’s already been fact-checked and humiliated for making the ridiculous claim that there’s massive fraud in absentee voting, President Donald Trump spun a new conspiracy theory on Thursday regarding mail voting, asserting that children in states such as California are “raiding mailboxes” and handing absentee ballots to adults who then fill them out illegally.
During a press opportunity in the Oval Office, Trump began his rant against voting by incorrectly stating that California Gov. Gavin Newsom had just sent out 28 million mail ballots to everyone in the state, including non-U.S. citizens. In reality, Newsom sent request forms for absentee ballots to all registered voters in the Golden State. He then added:
“So when he sends out 28 million ballots, and they’re in all the mailboxes, and kids go and they raid the mailboxes, and they hand them to people that are signing the ballots at the end of the street – which is happening – they grab the ballots. You don’t think that happens? There’s ballot harvesting where all – you know we had seven elections, for Congress, and they were like tied, they lost every one of them, ’cause they came and they dropped a whole pile of ballots on the table.”
Did the president provide a shred of evidence to support his conspiracy theory? No. He didn’t. But that didn’t stop him from going on with his ridiculous whining:
They do worse than that. In some cases they won’t sell them, like, to a Republican community, a conservative community. They don’t happen to send the ballots to those communities. And there’s no way of checking. No, you have to go and you have to vote. Voting is a great thing. Voting – we would be the laughing stock of the world. And if you just, use common sense, you know that? You know that’s going to happen. But they raid the mailboxes, they can even print ballots, the same paper, the same machine, nothing special, they get the same paper, the same machine, they print ballots, and (Attorney General) Bill (Barr) would have to do a great job to catch them doing it.”
The President is fact checked on his mail in voting tweets in real time and responds with a long rant which includes a strange claim that ballots aren’t being sent to conservative communities pic.twitter.com/vjpFXPiYY4
— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) May 28, 2020
There’s not a shred of truth to any of those fantastical scenarios, and even AG Barr didn’t comment on what Trump had just said.
The real issue here is that Trump is terrified that a big voter participation in November will mean he and the GOP are swept out of office. But there’s not a damn thing he can do if states decide to allow absentee balloting by all their citizens.
As usual, this is just Donald Trump wanting to deprive people of their most fundamental right: The right to vote. He cannot be allowed to succeed.
Featured Image Via Screenshot
