So President Donald Trump has come to the realization that he probably needs fraud in
order to win reelection in November.
He needs to suppress the vote in order to have a solid shot at defeating Joe Biden.
And his administration isn't even hiding it anymore.
There's a new report which I encourage you to read in Politico, explaining that Trump's
aides, Trump staffers, the people around him know this and they're now looking at any way
they can come up with to suppress the vote, curb, vote by mail, disenfranchize as many
people as possible when they are people that are likely to vote for Joe Biden rather than
Donald Trump.
Now, you might remember last week I told you we shouldn't be that confident in Joe Biden's
lead.
And that's true.
That hasn't changed.
If you look at polls that have Biden up nine and you see that there's a margin of error
of three and a half.
That means Joe Biden might only be up by two.
Hillary won by two in 2016 in the popular vote and still lost the Electoral College.
That analysis from last week is true.
And in particular, if anything, changes between now and November, that helps Donald Trump
a slightly improved economy.
We'll talk about Q3 GDP numbers, which we will get literally four days before the election.
We could see a one or two point swing away from Biden and towards Trump.
And Trump gets reelected.
So that's all true.
But it is also clear that it's too close for comfort.
And the report in Politico points out that there is a complete and total commitment from
the Trump campaign to a strategy not of improving the country, not of improving the economy,
not of dealing with coronavirus.
The strategy is essentially fraud to suppress the vote so that the will of the people is
not accurately represented.
This is not the type of fraud, by the way, that they claim exists.
Trump now has spent two, three months, I guess, pushing the idea that there was in-person
voter fraud back in 2016 and in 2020 there will be vote by mail fraud.
If more people vote by mail, remember, Trump has not accepted the popular vote result of
the 2016 election, which had him winning the presidency.
Trump won electorally in 2016.
He lost the popular vote by millions of votes.
He still has not accepted that.
And now he insists if we increase mail in voting in 2020, it will be a fake, fraudulent
rigged election.
The real there will be fraud.
But the real fraud is what Trump is doing to suppress the vote.
The real fraud is what Trump is doing to prevent vote by mail and to kneecap the post office.
And we're already seen seeing bins of mail overflowing and post offices across the country
as postal workers are restricted in being able to work overtime to get the mail delivered.
If you want fraud in the sense of someone preventing the will of the people from being
done, it's what Donald Trump and people around him are doing and they have gone fully mask
off.
They're not even pretending otherwise.
And when you actually look at the full list of what they're doing, it should be criminal.
Now, if we want to give Trump a consequence, it's removing him in November.
Right.
What he's doing should be criminal.
But I mean, forget it right there.
That's not going to be the way it's handled.
You've got a massive effort in a bunch of states to file lawsuits, to change voting
rules when it comes to vote by mail and voting absentee.
That includes Minneapolis, Minnesota, rather, Pennsylvania and Nevada.
Aides are trying to figure out what executive orders can Trump sign to just unilaterally
curb mail in voting through any possible means.
They're looking at how can they stop mail in ballots from being counted after Election
Day.
As many of you know, depending on state rules, as long as the postmark date of the mail in
ballot is before the election or no later than Election Day.
It would still be counted and usually mail within states doesn't take more than a couple
of days to be delivered.
And those vote but ballots would be counted in the couple of days after Election Day.
Trump is looking to limit that.
And Trump is also looking, according to aides.
Speaking to Politico, Trump is looking at could he tell the Postal Service not to deliver
certain ballots that states send out?
All of this is on the table.
Now, here is the really important message.
A bunch of experts in voting have looked at everything that they are planning.
They've looked at all of these ways in which Donald Trump could suppress the vote.
And they've come to the conclusion that these techniques can only do so much.
In other words, if you slow down mail delivery, OK, you can delay it.
But if people vote early enough, few send in your absentee ballot to three weeks before
the election.
It's going to get there before Election Day, even if Trump slows down the post.
Well, service to some degree.
A lot of this stuff is done at the state and local level.
So the takeaway is slowing down the mail, finding executive orders to hamper delivery
of mail in ballot.
All of this different stuff.
It can only do so much.
And
if we overwhelm the vote, it's going to be more
powerful than anything Trump can do from what's been floated so far.
So, yes, at the state and local level between now and November, we need to do everything
we can to push governors and election officials to run the election properly, to not allow
these dirty tricks to actually take hold.
We need to do everything we can.
Yes, at the federal level.
We've got Trump's postmaster general who needs to continually be dragged before House committees
to testify and to be put on the defensive about what he's doing.
But he still might get away with some of this stuff.
But in the end, the cumulative effect of all of these techniques, all of these ideas, it
can only do a little bit of suppression if our turnout is low.
It could hand the election to Donald Trump if our turnout is high.
It will not make a difference if we overwhelm the vote.
And that includes when you can safely vote in person doing it, when you can vote by mail,
sending in your ballot two, three, four weeks early.
Meaning if it takes off an extra five days to be delivered, it's not going to be a problem.
These techniques cannot put Trump back in the Oval Office.
If, if, if, if, if we vote.
And that's the good news.
Now, we also can't ignore.
The foreign meddling.
Peace.
And
that's
what I
want
to
talk about next.