With just months to go until the election, President Trump is getting cold feet.
Floundering in the polls and struggling to cope with the coronavirus crisis, Trump suggested for the first time Thursday that November’s election should be postponed — but not even his Republican allies in Congress were onboard with the constitutionally dubious idea.
In an eyebrow-raising tweet that sent shock waves on Capitol Hill, Trump claimed an unprecedented delay may be in order because state plans to expand mail-in voting amid the pandemic will result in “the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history.”
“It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” Trump wrote.
Trump’s oft-repeated fraud fretting about mail-in voting is unsupported by evidence. His delay proposal, meanwhile, quickly proved toothless, as the two top Republicans in Congress smacked it down.
“Never in the history of the country, through wars, depressions and the Civil War have we ever not had a federally scheduled election on time,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in an interview with a local TV station in his home state. “We’ll cope with whatever the situation is and have the election on Nov. 3 as already scheduled.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the lower chamber’s top Republican, agreed: “We should go forward.”
The Constitution affords Congress the sole power to push back a presidential election. Considering the rare rebukes from McConnell and McCarthy, Trump’s proposal is dead in the water.
Later Thursday, Trump tried to spin the backlash as an accomplishment.
“It’s had an interesting impact,” he said during an evening briefing from the White House. “What people are now looking at is, ‘am I right?'”
He also suggested his reason for wanting a delay is that mail-in ballots are time-consuming to tally.
“I don’t want to delay,” he said. “But I also don’t want to have to wait for three months and find out the ballots are all missing and the election doesn’t mean anything.”
Minutes before Trump’s “delay” tweet, his Commerce Department released data showing that the U.S. economy shrunk by 32.9% between April and June — the worst fiscal drop in American history. The sensational delay claim also comes as Trump is trailing Joe Biden by double-digits in nearly all general election polls, and is behind in traditionally red states like Florida.
Democrats said Trump’s latest tirade shows he’s desperate to distract from a cratering economy and the worsening pandemic, which has already killed more than 150,000 Americans.
“Let’s be plain: This is the act of a tyrant. A president who in the midst of crisis has not taken responsibility for the lives of his people, the fact that folks are losing jobs right and left, people are hurting,” Mayor de Blasio said in a briefing from City Hall. “He’s only trying to save his own skin. He knows he’s going to lose the election so he’s calling for it to be postponed … that is an assault on our democracy and it cannot stand.”
Gov. Cuomo barely wanted to dignify Trump’s outburst with a response.
“The president speaks about a lot of things,” the governor told reporters on a press call. “He has no authority to change the election date.”
Trump’s election assault came on the same day that nearly all his living predecessors, including Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, spoke at the funeral for Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.). Trump, who once called Lewis’ majority-Black congressional district “crime infested,” was not invited.
In a virtual campaign fundraiser event Thursday night, Biden suggested Trump’s delay threat was all about distracting from Lewis’ funeral in Atlanta.
“(Trump) doesn’t want to focus on what’s going on today with our buddy,” Biden said.
Biden has long raised concern that Trump could attempt to delay the election if his path to victory dissipates.
“Mark my words: I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can’t be held,” Biden said at a campaign fundraiser in April. “Donald Trump is terrified. He knows he’s going to lose.”
At the time, Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh called Biden’s accusations “the incoherent, conspiracy theory ramblings of a lost candidate.”
Asked for an updated response on Thursday, the Trump campaign attempted to downplay the president’s tweet.
“The president is just raising a question about the chaos Democrats have created with their insistence on all mail-in voting,” said Hogan Gidley, the campaign’s national press secretary.
Still, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declined to condemn the idea of delaying the election during Thursday testimony before the Senate.
“I’m not going to enter a legal judgment on that on the fly,” Pompeo said.
Despite Trump’s relentless accusations, there’s no evidence to suggest mail-in ballots are uniquely susceptible to widespread voter fraud. There are individual instances of mail-in ballots being used for fraudulent purposes, but experts say such tinkering is rare and does not jeopardize the overall integrity of an election.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), who’s under consideration to become Biden’s running mate, said she believes Trump’s delay threats are ultimately about his own insecurities.
“He knows he’s going to lose,” she tweeted. “It will require every single one of us to make that happen. We will see you at the ballot box on November 3rd, @realDonaldTrump.”
With Shant Shahrigian and Denis Slattery
