Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) this week accused President Donald Trump of deliberately “spreading misinformation” about voting by mail because Trump thinks he is going to lose the 2020 election.
Speaking to failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams on Instagram Live, Schumer said the “hypocrisy of Trump is legendary” and ripped him for playing up mail-in voting fraud while he and his staffers cast absentee ballots “regularly.”
“I think he thinks he’s going to lose. And I think he feels if he delegitimizes the process… and this is something we all have to worry about… if he delegitimizes the process, maybe there’s a way, even if he loses [by a small margin]… he can sort of say the process was illegitimate, contest it,” he said. We all went through Bush v. Gore in 2000, with a Republican machine that basically pushed the election in their direction with help, I might add, from the Supreme Court, unfortunately. So I think it’s because he’s going to lose, and he wants to delegitimize.”
Schumer also said that he thinks Trump wants the “lowest turnout possible because he knows the masses of people are against him” and “lots of people will vote by mail—people who might be frail, people who might be disabled, people who might be worried about Covid or whoever else.”
The New York Democrat said Trump also doesn’t believe in the process, the rule of law, and the “sacred right to vote,” adding, “hopefully we won’t see anyone like that in a position of power again.”
“The only thing he believes is whatever helps Donald Trump at the moment, it doesn’t matter if it’s lying, it doesn’t matter if it’s dishonest, it doesn’t matter if it hurts people,” he continued. “Look what happened in Tulsa, where he was talking about we shouldn’t have testing, which is life and death for people, because it would make him look bad. It’s only his ego.”
Abrams said the voters must “have to overwhelm the system” and spread “good information to counter the disinformation” to defeat Trump’s “voter suppression” agenda.
“Delegitimization of elections happens when the numbers are close and one of the ways that those who engage in voter suppression can claim victory, either in reality or putatively, is that they they can shave the margins like anyone who tries to steal,” Abrams said.
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