If the Trump administration is trying to sabotage our elections, that is yet another potential reason to impeach Trump. Vice reports that the Post Office is deactivating mail sorting machines ahead of the election, making it harder to process ballots by mail. Meanwhile, Fox News reports that Trump seeks to starve the Post Office to limit mail-in voting. The Washington Post reports:
President Trump said Thursday that he does not want to fund the U.S. Postal Service because Democrats are seeking to expand mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic, making explicit the reason he has declined to approve $25 billion in emergency funding for the cash-strapped agency. ‘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 in an interview with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo. He added: ‘Now, if we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting, they just can’t have it.’”
For a president to interfere with the public’s ability to vote him out of office is an outrageous assault on democracy. And he very likely will be voted out of office, partly due to his contempt for the rule of law.
On June 16, Michigan Live reported that “President Donald Trump’s support among Michigan voters took a sharp dive in polls taken immediately after protesters were forcefully removed so Trump could have his photo taken holding a Bible outside a historic church” in front of the White House. As it notes, two surveys of Michigan voters taken by EPIC-MRA found a rapidly widening gap between Trump and Biden. One poll conducted from May 30 to June 3 found Biden leading by 12 percentage points, but the second poll, which started and ended just one day later, recorded a 16-point lead for the former vice president. “Pollster Bernie Porn attributed the quick drop to public backlash and negative press resulting from Trump’s staged photo on June 1,” notes Michigan Live. Voters nationally also reacted negatively to Trump’s strange photo op and the tear-gassing of the protesters near the church.
The “tear-gassing of protesters” (the government claims it was pepper spray) was not the only instance in which the administration displayed contempt for the First Amendment. In June, a judge rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to get an injunction barring the release of former national security adviser John Bolton’s new book, The Room Where It Happened. Such injunctions are deemed an impermissible prior restraint, in violation of the First Amendment, under the Supreme Court’s decision in New York Times v. United States (1971).
The Trump administration has also sought to undermine the First Amendment by asking the FCC to moderate content under Section 230.
