The rioting across American cities is prompting mail delivery delays, endangering the lives of U.S. Postal Service (USPS) personnel, and likely resulting in the removal of mailboxes from areas plagued by unrest, the Postmaster General told lawmakers Monday.
“Any kind of rioting does produce delays with any type of public service,” Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, proclaimed, referring to unrest in Democrat-run cities such as Portland, Chicago, New York City, and Seattle.
His comments came during a hearing by the Democrat-controlled House Oversight and Reform Committee.
“Yes, it would slow down the mail,” DeJoy stressed later, alluding to the riots.
Unrest in U.S. cities “absolutely” endangers the safety of the person delivering the mail, he added.
The Postmaster General also suggested that the chaos in U.S. cities may lead to the removal of some mailboxes.
“There are … [certain] procedures that we have for situations — for public unrest that we deploy [for] a variety of different things up to and including getting our collection boxes out of there when it happens,” DeJoy noted.
Some rioters destroyed mailboxes by setting them ablaze, but the Democrats ignored those violent acts. Instead, they have shifted the blame towards the Trump administration, accusing it of removing mailboxes and taking other actions to suppress the vote, particularly their mail-in vote proposal.
During the hearing, Rep. Gary Palmer (R-AL) asserted that he heard a “chuckle” from the Democrats as Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) also mentioned that riots were meddling with mail delivery in some cities.
Palmer provided pictures depicting a post office “burned-out” by rioters in Minneapolis, and explained:
This is a picture of the burned-out post office in Minneapolis, okay? There was mail in that post office that was lost. There may have been prescription drugs that were lost. There may have been Social Security checks in that office that were lost.
It is a fact that not only is the mail delivery delayed when you have anarchists laying siege to cities all over the country, it endangers postal workers, delivery people. It may have endangered people’s lives who were not able to get their medicine because it burned up in the Minneapolis post office. That’s not funny.
Meanwhile, Democrats and their allies have accused Trump and DeJoy of sabotaging the USPS to prevent people from voting. Democrats have been pushing the “false narrative” that the Trump administration is removing mailboxes, denying much-needed funding to the Postal Service, and implementing cost-cutting measures as part of some devious plot to suppress the vote, DeJoy testified.
President Trump does believe universal mail-in voting is vulnerable to fraud.
Although Democrats claim that COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) has made it unsafe to vote in person, experts, including mainstream media darling Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the U.S. government, have asserted otherwise.
Along with the cost-cutting measures now suspended by DeJoy, the removal of the boxes generated conspiracy theories about Trump intentionally limiting mail delivery.
Referring to the removal of the boxes on Monday, DeJoy described it as a “normal process” that has been around for “50 years.”
“We will be able to handle all election mail for the 2020 election” he added, noting that the agency does not need a $25 billion bailout the Democrats insist is necessary to prevent USPS from going insolvent before the election.
USPS reportedly has enough money to remain solvent through August 2021.
“We are seeing more revenue [compared to last year] mostly due to packaging rates,” DeJoy testified. “Mail products are down 15 percent, albeit also on average.”
The Postmaster General explained that removing mailboxes from low traffic areas and mail sorting machines when there was a decline in mail volume was part of a long-standing policy that preceded the Trump administration.
Not one Democrat asked about the potential risk riots pose to USPS personnel and mail delivery