CNN reports that Former President Barack Obama took on President Donald Trump’s attempts to stall funding for the United States Postal Service in a podcast published Friday, slamming his successor’s opposition to the much-needed funds as a craven attempt to boost his chances of winning in November.
Obama, in a podcast with David Plouffe, his former campaign manager, took on the Trump administration in direct terms, including calling out Vice President Mike Pence by name.
“What we’ve seen in a way that is unique to modern political history is a President who is explicit in trying to discourage people from voting,” Obama said. “What we’ve never seen before is a President say, ‘I’m going to try to actively kneecap the postal service to encourage voting and I will be explicit about the reason I’m doing it.'”
Obama added: “That’s sort of unheard of.”
Obama is referring to ongoing negotiations between Democrats and Republicans on the latest coronavirus stimulus bill. Democrats are packing a proposal by the postal service’s Board of Governors that calls for $25 billion in funding for the beleaguered federal entity.
Trump, as part of his long running campaign against mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic, tied the postal service funding to voting, telling Fox Business that if the postal service does not receive the additional funding, then he believes the Post Office won’t be able to handle the influx of mail-in ballots in the upcoming election.
“They want three and a half billion dollars for something that’ll turn out to be fraudulent, that’s election money basically. They want three and a half billion dollars for the mail-in votes. Universal mail-in ballots. They want $25 billion, billion, for the Post Office. Now they need that money in order to make the Post Office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said, repeating his false claims that mail-in voting would be “fraudulent.”
“But if they don’t get those two items that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it,” Trump added.
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