Richard Groves: Trump blames the post office
Remember the kid in elementary school who bragged that he could outrun all the other kids, but when the time came for the big race on the playground at recess he made excuses for why he probably wasn't going to win? It was those darned new shoes he was wearing, he said.
Donald Trump is that kid grown up.
As Nov. 5 looms large, Trump is preparing his base for possible defeat by giving them someone or something to blame in advance, including — are you ready? — the post office.
On Sept. 15, Trump wrote on Truth Social: "The United States Postal Service has admitted that it is a poorly run mess that is experiencing mail losses and delays at a level never seen before. With this being the FACT, how can we possibly be expected to allow or trust the US Postal Service to run the 2024 presidential election? It is not possible for them to do so. Help!"
OK, you and I know, but evidently the former president of the United States does not know, that the U.S. Postal Service does not run presidential elections. Let's add that to the list of glaring gaps in his knowledge base and move on.
Why is Trump suddenly concerned about the efficiency of the post office? Two words (one of which is hyphenated): mail-in ballots.
Trump has consistently opposed voting by mail, which he sees as ripe for election fraud. In January, after he won the Iowa caucuses, he said, "We have to get rid of mail-in ballots because once you have mail-in ballots, you have crooked elections."
In April, he surprised everyone by reversing himself in a post on Truth Social: "Absentee voting, early voting and election day voting are all good options." Reportedly, members of his team convinced him that a lot of Republicans like to vote by mail.
Then, in August, Trump reversed his reversal, telling supporters in Johnstown, Pa., "The elections are so screwed-up ... We want to get rid of mail-in voting." He told conservative media personality Wayne Allyn Root, "We have a bad voting system. We have mail-in ballots."
Trump sees a potential loss ahead, and he's setting up the post office, among others, to take the fall.
"The post office is critiquing themself (sic) saying, 'We're really in bad shape, we can't deliver the mail. ... Well, we're gonna dump millions and millions of ballots,'" Trump told Root.
"We ought to bring a lawsuit," he said, "because they're gonna lose hundreds of thousands of ballots. Maybe purposely. Or maybe just through incompetence."
It isn't clear how this characterization sets with Louis DeJoy of Greensboro, who was appointed postmaster general in 2020, the last year of Trump's single term as president.
DeJoy and his wife, Aldona Wos, are major GOP fundraisrers, and held a lavish event in 2017 for Trump at their Irving Park home at $2,700 a ticket. But I digress.
In response to concerns about the ability of the post office to handle the increasing volume of mail-in-ballots — which has increased from 18% of the total number of ballots in 2012 to 32% in 2022 — an official at the Postal Service said: "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."
Trump's message is simple: If you can't trust the post office to process ballots efficiently and fairly (he says you can't), and if voting by mail is susceptible to election fraud (which it is, according to Trump), you can't trust the process by which we elect our leaders. If you can't trust the process, you can't trust the outcome of the election.
Donald Trump is preparing his base for the Big Lie 2.0, that the election, once again, has been stolen from him.
His followers will know where to place the blame: the post office and/or mail-in ballots. Or maybe illegal immigrants that the Border Czar, Kamala Harris, let in the country so they could vote for her. Or perhaps the Jews. Or other culprits to be named later.
In the background, I see an insecure little boy alibiing: "It's these darned new shoes I'm wearing."
