Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling on the House to return to Washington, presumably next weekend, for an unusual session during the presidency.
The long dreaded post-election day that addresses Trump’s false claims about vote fraud is already here – more than two months early – because of the construction camp in Washington over the Postal Service.
“The postmaster general and top post leadership must answer to Congress and the American people why they are pursuing this dangerous new policy that threatens to silence the votes of millions, months before the election,” Democratic leaders said. , including Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, said in a statement announcing at the hearing that they want to have a new week with DeJoy, a top Trump fundraiser.
The rapid Democratic mobilization puts the heated dispute over the sanctity of the November vote at the center of the election campaign and escalates tensions that could play into a longer political and legal imbroglio if the November result is tight.
As a strategic issue, Trump highlighted his remark last week that he would move $ 25 billion in new funding for the postal system, as it would lead to more post-in voting could also boost Democratic efforts to persuade voters to cast their ballots pay early and potentially put a bank ahead of party nominee Joe Biden.
Millions of additional voters are expected to vote by mail this year, given their warning about appearances at polling stations with the virus still raging. Trump has responded to the prospect with false claims that voting for mail-in is fraught with fraud and will lead to the most corrupt elections in history.
Trump’s prospects have been jeopardized by his unfair handling of the coronavirus – which helped plunge the US economy, which he had hoped to ride after reelection, into freefall.
“I hope to win, how can you not if you see figures like this both on the virus and on the economy?” said the president Saturday at a news conference at his golf resort in New Jersey.
The United States has more Covid-19 cases and more deaths than any other nation. While some countries that did a much better job than the US in fighting the virus are fighting for a resurgence, the scale of the American tragedy remains astonishing. For 16 of the 20 days to Saturday, the U.S. reported more than 1,000 new deaths per day, according to Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.
USPS, White House promises no more removal of sorting machines
Despite Trump’s damaging allegations, there was one sign that the administration was beginning to realize the president’s accusations of fraud and concerns about the sanctity of the USPS could rebound on him.
Vermont sen. Bernie Sanders, Biden’s striker in the Democratic primary race, warned on “State of the Union” that more than the integrity of the Postal Service was at stake.
“What matters most, whether you are a Democrat, or a Republican, or you are a progressive, or you are a Conservative, do you believe in American democracy?” Sanders asked.
“Do you believe that people, in the midst of a pandemic, when we have already lost 170,000 people, need to put people’s lives on the line to go to a polling station, or can they vote via a post-a vote?”
However, Meadows signaled in the same vein that the White House would not ignore its warnings of massive pending election fraud – and an attempt to make a false distinction between “absentee balloting” and “mail-in vote” despite stricter systems instead of authenticity of all votes.
Tapper told Tapper there was no evidence of fraud in the post-election general election in the U.S. Meadows replied, “There is no evidence that there is not one.”
Trump: ‘There is fraud, there is theft’
In addition to trying to postpone the election by restricting post-in restrictions, Trump may also renew his baseless claims because he is looking forward to the election.
He warned on Saturday that post-in ballots could delay the election results “months as for years”.
“These votes will all be lost. They will be gone … the votes are lost. There is fraud. There is theft. It’s happening all over the place.”
Election experts say election fraud is small compared to the size of U.S. elections and that there is no evidence that mailing systems already in place in multiple states are more prone to irregularities.
Trump seems to save himself a face when he loses Biden big or leaves the political groundwork for multiple legal challenges in a desperate bid to cling to power if he loses narrowly.
He is playing with fire because his claims greatly undermine the risk of the chances that the election will be seen as free and fair by all voters. Such a national consensus forms the basis of the American political system itself.
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