Donald Trump Says Mail-In Voting Is ‘Biggest Risk’ To His Reelection
U.S. President Donald Trump believes the biggest challenge to his reelection bid may come from more Americans having access to mail-in voting this fall. The president told Alex Isenstadt of Politico in a Thursday interview that this particular threat to his bid to retain the White House is why he’s launched several lawsuits around the country. His campaign’s suits are attempting to limit access to the expanded voting rules, which several states have announced in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
It’s estimated that tens of millions of voters could be disenfranchised if they decided to stay home on voting day. States including California and Michigan announced earlier this summer that in order to stop that disenfranchisement from happening, they are going to be issuing absentee ballots to every voter. Trump took to Twitter last month, announcing that he believed those efforts were going to lead to voter fraud. One state in which there is an ongoing lawsuit is California. The filing came after Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order expanding mail-in voting.
“My biggest risk is that we don’t win lawsuits,” Trump told Isenstadt. “We have many lawsuits going all over. And if we don’t win those lawsuits, I think — I think it puts the election at risk.”
If the president does lose those lawsuits, he was asked whether or not he would accept the results of the elections, no matter what. Trump said that was the kind of question he can’t answer because of all the things that could happen between now and then.
He also claimed that Hilary Clinton didn’t concede the election in 2016, however, Clinton conceded defeat the day after the votes were tallied.
Trump’s admission that mail-in voting is a threat to his campaign came on the day a new poll surfaced on Fox News. That poll echoed results that have been showing up all over the country. The president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter demonstrations have hurt him among many voting groups. The new poll showed Trump down by 12 points.
The results were similar to a CNN poll released a few weeks back that showed the president trailing Joe Biden by 14 points. The Trump campaign filed a suit against CNN claiming bias as a result of that poll.
Despite his popularity struggles, the president told Isenstadt that he believed Senate Republicans should think twice before abandoning him. The GOP’s hold on the majority in the U.S. Senate is also thought to be very tenuous, and there have been rumors that some senators could split from the White House.
“If they don’t embrace, they’re going to lose, because, you know, I have a very hard base. I have the strongest base people have ever seen,” said Trump.
