President Donald Trump is continuing to raise his concerns about mail-in voting ahead of the 2020 presidential election, saying, “You know, you could have a case where this election won’t be decided on the evening of Nov. 3. This election could be decided two months later.”
While mentioning Trump’s recent remarks where he did not commit to accepting the results of the presidential election if he loses, Axios’ Jonathan Swan asked the president, “What does that actually look like as the sitting president?”
Trump quickly responded that Hillary Clinton “never accepted” the results, though Swan jumped in to say Clinton conceded on election night.
The president then went on to lay out what he called a “new phenomenon” with mail-in voting. He has repeatedly torn into mail-in voting, spreading a false claim that it leads to widespread voter fraud. Also, the widespread use of mail-in voting is not a new thing.
He went on to note that mail-in voting will be “massively bigger” this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, adding, “in terms of the kind of millions and millions of ballots. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
The president went on about mail-in voting, “Somebody got a ballot for a dog. Somebody got a ballot for something else. You got millions of ballots going. Nobody even knows where they’re going.”
Swan said, “I honestly don’t understand this topic with you. The Republican party has an extremely well-funded vote-by-mail program.”
See Trumps remarks below (starting at 22:20):
The Axios reporter then held up an email from Trump’s re-election campaign, as he said, “Your campaign puts out emails telling people to vote by mail. Your daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, she robocalls in California saying it’s safe and secure, mail-in voting. The Republican won. That was an all-mail-in race.”
Trump responded, “We have many court cases where we’re trying to end it.” He added, “We went through World War I, you went to the polls, you voted. We went through World War II, you went to the polls, you voted.”
“We’ve had mail-in voting since the Civil War,” Swan responded.