MIAMI, Florida — Former President Donald Trump told Breitbart News exclusively here on Friday that Republicans must engage and fight Democrats on mail voting and ballot harvesting like the Democrats fight, saying the GOP has “no choice” but to “live with the system that stinks” for now until Republicans get back into power and can change it for the better.
To be clear, Trump still believes there should be systemic reform to the way elections are conducted. “The best thing would be same-day voting, paper ballots, voter ID, et cetera,” he said, reiterating points he has made in public remarks and in previous interviews with Breitbart News on this front.
He also bashed the mail voting and ballot harvesting system in play nationally as broadly “corrupt.”
An election worker opens envelopes containing vote-by-mail ballots at King County Elections in Renton, Washington, on August 3, 2020. (JASON REDMOND/AFP via Getty Images)
“The system, it’s not a question of being broken — the system is corrupt,” Trump told Breitbart News. “It’s a corrupt system. A mail-in ballot will always be corrupt. When you go to a polling location and they want your identification and everything, the way — you can’t really vote unless it’s a legit deal. If you have mail-in ballots, nobody has any idea where it’s coming from or where it’s going to and then it travels through so many hands. Jimmy Carter came out a long time ago with a number of highly respected people and they wrote something, and the one thing that come out loud and clear is that mail-in ballots are corrupt. France had it, a lot of countries had it and they went away from it now.”
While Trump questioning these matters is not particularly new, the interesting and very new detail here is Trump recognizes that for now Republicans are not in the position they need to be at in government, at the federal or state and local levels, to be able to enact major reforms on this front. So, until such time as they can, Trump says now Republicans should continue to “shame” Democrats but recognize that the system is the way it is — but more importantly Trump says the GOP should actually compete with Democrats on this battlefield in elections and try to outdo the Democrats in the mail voting.
“You’re right,” Trump said when Breitbart News noted that Republicans cannot change the rules if they are not in power. “But you can shame the hell out of people and you can shame the Democrats. The Democrats know it’s corrupt and the Democrats should want to fix it but they don’t because they do have an advantage under that system. For the time, though, we have to live with the system that stinks so we have to fight it like they do, which is your question.”
When asked specifically if Republicans should compete with Democrats on mail voting and ballot harvesting where they are legal and in practice, Trump said the GOP has “no choice.”
“They have no choice. They have to,” Trump said when asked specifically if Republicans should pursue mail votes and ballot harvesting where legal and in practice, noting too that he believes Democrats should want to fix the election system.
“But the Democrats should want to fix it too because it’s a corrupt election,” Trump said. “Our elections are totally corrupt. The Democrats should want to fix that. They don’t because it is to their benefit the way it is now. But the Republicans have no choice but to fix it. It’s going to be very hard but the Republicans have to fix it.”