‘Wet hot mess’: How Trump politicized the mail — and angered conservatives
“The president has been a wet hot mess on this issue,” said Kevin Kosar, the vice president of the right-leaning R Street Institute, who has written about postal reform. “It’s created a lot of needless confusion.”
…
Thus, the idea that boosting USPS funding is part of some “terrible plot that he needs to stop,” as Kosar put it, is incorrect. “[T]he Postal Service would have no role in that plot per se. Because the Postal Service doesn’t get to choose if it carries ballots or not. Elections administrators have to choose that.”
…
Kosar warned that Trump’s theories could actually scare potential Republican voters from sending in mail-in ballots — a self-defeating move, considering absentee voters may have helped Trump pull off his 2016 victory, according to The Washington Post.
“It’s freaking out members of the public,” he said. “You may have lower GOP turnout.”
…
In nearly two decades of studying the Postal Service, added Kosar, he had never seen a Republican lawmaker in favor of defunding or privatizing the Postal Service — a cross-continental service with a profit-adverse obligation to get mail to every American, no matter how far-flung they may be.
“I can’t remember even a draft bill by a backbencher to privatize the Postal Service,” he said. “I think the reason is, is because every member of Congress has postal workers in their districts and states. And they would just be throwing votes away.”
