Trump admits he's blocking $25 billion US Postal Service bailout to sabotage mail-in voting

President Donald Trump seemingly admitted that he's blocking a bailout of the United States Postal Service (USPS) to sabotage mail-in voting. President Trump suggested on Wednesday that he would not sign a relief bill that included billions for the post office to handle increased mail-in voting this November.

"They turned down this bill because they want radical left agenda items that nobody in their right mind would approve," Trump said of Democrats refusing to agree to the Republican's coronavirus relief bill. "The bill's not going to happen because they don't even want to talk about it because we can't give them the kind of ridiculous things that they want that have nothing to do with the China virus."

"So, therefore, they don't have the money to do the universal mail-in voting, so therefore they can't do it, I guess, right?" he stated. "Are they going to do it even though they don't have the money?"

And during an interview with Fox Business on Thursday morning, Trump said the same thing.

"They want $25 billion — billion — for the post office. Now they need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots," Trump said. "Now, in the meantime, they aren't getting there. By the way, those are just two items. But if they don't get those two items, that means you can't have universal mail-in voting ... because they're not equipped."

Unsurprisingly, the claim attracted a strong response on social media. "Donald Trump is trying to defund the United States Post Office so that less people vote," Congressmember Karen Bass, a Democrat from New York, wrote.

Another added: The USPS is a non-partisan, civil institution. It’s being politicized only because @realDonaldTrump is afraid he can’t win fair and square & setting a deeply dangerous precedent in the process. All Americans of good conscience must stand up & #SaveTheUSPS."

President Trump has long opposed a relief bill having money for the USPS. In April, a White House official told The Washington Post: "We told them very clearly that the president was not going to sign the bill if [money for the Postal Service] was in it. I don't know if we used the v-bomb, but the president was not going to sign it, and we told them that."

President Trump has claimed, without evidence, that mail-in ballots are prone to voter fraud. "You get thousands and thousands of people sitting in somebody's living room, signing ballots all over the place," he has claimed.

The rate of voting fraud overall is between 0.00004% and 0.0009%, according to a 2017 study by the Brennan Center for Justice.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has introduced cost-cutting methods that have resulted in a slow down of the service.