President Trump launched into an unwieldy rant on Thursday when asked about his false claims that mail-in ballots leads to voter fraud.
Shortly before the President signed an executive order on Thursday targeting social media companies — which comes after Twitter used a new fact-checking label to correct his false vote by mail claims earlier this week — a reporter pointed out his erroneous claim that California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) plans to send ballots out to everyone in the state. The reporter then clarified that mail-in ballots will only be sent to registered voters in California.
Trump responded by going on an unhinged rant that similarly echoed his recent tweets falsely accusing Newsom of sending millions of ballots to “anyone living in the state, no matter who they are,” before baselessly passing the buck to children.
“Kids go and they raid the mailboxes and they hand them to people that are signing the ballots down at the end of the street — which is happening — they grab the ballots,” Trump said. “You don’t think that happens?”
Trump went on to ramble about “ballot harvesting” and claimed that ballots being “ripped out of mailboxes” aren’t being sold to Republican or conservative communities.
The President then confusingly argued that the country “would be the laughingstock of the world” if his unfounded claim of mailbox raiding continues.
“They can even print ballots. They get the same paper, the same machine — nothing special. They get the same paper, the same machine, they print ballots, and (Attorney General Bill Barr) would have to do a great job to catch them doing it or your state authorities would have to,” Trump said, before adding that there is “tremendous potential for fraud and abuse.”
Watch Trump’s remarks below:
Trump baselessly claims fraud from mail-in ballots occurs when kids raid mailboxes pic.twitter.com/wYgqTtm5rM
— Talking Points Memo (@TPM) May 28, 2020
