Trump is going after the U.S. Postal Service to 'derail' the election: Congresswoman

Read Story Transcript

A Democratic lawmaker say U.S. President Donald Trump is targeting the U.S. Postal Service to make it harder for people to vote by mail in the upcoming presidential election.

At the heart of those concerns are cost-cutting measures implemented by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who has donated $2.7 million US to Trump and his fellow Republicans since 2017, and comments made by the president himself alleging, without evidence, that mail-in ballots lead to election fraud.

The president told Fox Business Network on Thursday that he's denying a request for $25 billion in funding for the Postal Service to meet the needs of voters during the pandemic, claiming the money would be used for "something that'll turn out to be fraudulent." He later said he would approve the funding if Democrats made concessions. 

The U.S. Postal Service recently sent letters to 46 states and D.C. warning that it can't guarantee all mail-in ballots will be delivered in time to be counted for the November election, the Washington Post reports. 

The 300,000-member National Association of Letter Carriers said on Friday that the union's executive council had endorsed Trump's Democratic rival Joe Biden for president, warning "the very survival" of the U.S. Postal Service is at stake.

The Postal Service's internal watchdog is investigating DeJoy's policy changes at the request of Democrats, reports CNN.

Alma Adams, a Democratic congresswoman from North Carolina, spoke to As It Happens guest host Peter Armstrong on Friday. Here is part of their conversation.

The postmaster general said last week that his agency has "ample capacity to deliver all election mail securely and on time." How confident are you in that right now?

I am not confident about that. And he isn't either, if he's honest about it.

There's already been delays. I don't know what's happening with your mail, but my mail's delayed. And everybody that I've talked to, their mail is delayed. A lot of our veterans aren't getting their medication. So that's just not true. And he knows it's not true.

All the things that he seems to be doing in terms of these new rules and regulations are really attempts to really slow the mail down. And that's exactly what's happening.

Louis DeJoy, the postmaster general, has said that, "The notion that I would ever make decisions concerning the Postal Service at the direction of the president or anyone else in this administration is wholly off base." What do you say to that?

First of all, he has no background experience to even serve in this position. His connection with Donald Trump is a financial one in terms of contributions that he's made to his campaign.

I think it's all been rigged. And he's there for that purpose, to ... help the president derail this election, to bring the post office down.

So, no, I don't believe Mr. DeJoy at all.

Those are some pretty big claims, that it's rigged, that he's there to help the president with the election, that he's trying to bring down the post office. Do you have any actual proof that that has happened?

I think we can look around and we see that, for example, he eliminated overtime. And, you know, our postal workers need that overtime, because mail is now overtime.

Think about it. In this pandemic ... more packages are coming through, more mail is coming through. Our small businesses are more dependent on the post office. Our seniors are more dependent on the post office to get their medications. So there has been an abundance of mail.

So why would you do things to slow it down? 

The president has said outright that he's not going to provide any funding.

That stuff is being strategically done to really hamper this election, to slow down this process and really to keep people from casting their ballots by mail should they want to do that.

And that is an alternative that should be available to people. In North Carolina, for example, we can request an absentee ballot and we can do it. But again, even if you've got that and you get it in the mail, and they're doing all of these things to slow it down, then people have concerns about whether or not their ballot's going to get where it needs to be and if it's going to be counted.

You say Trump isn't willing to add any money to the funds. He says he'll put in $25 billion in funding — if Democratic lawmakers like yourselves make concessions. Are you willing to make those concessions to see that money?

Well, that depends on the concessions that he wants.

We had this huge tax break that the president, as he got into office, they put into place. So part of the deficit that they talk about is one that the president created.

So, it depends. You know, I haven't seen any concessions that make any sense that will really help our heroes, as we call them, through the Heroes Act. So he's doing a lot of talking, but he's not doing much else.

And at the same time, all of this is happening at an extraordinary time for the USPS. It's a dire financial situation. We know that tough decisions need to be made and that some of these things that we're talking about here, they were part of the plan, were they not?

What was part of the plan?

Well, a reduction of services. The USPS simply doesn't have capacity to act and to function the way that it used to. Is that a fair assessment?

The Postal Service clearly has had some some issues in terms of funding and, of course, I think we have a responsibility — particularly now in this day of COVID, when people are at home, when people are relying on the post office — to not do things to disrupt that service, but to do as much as we can and more to improve the service.

Do you think the kinds of comments we're hearing from the president, specifically about mail-in voting ... is confusing to voters?

He's been confusing to voters and citizens from the time he got in office. I mean, all you have to do is think about and look at what he said over and over again about the pandemic. Not only has he been confusing, he has certainly not been about telling the truth.

There are thousands of reports out here to document the fact that he has continued to lie over and over and over again. So, yes, he has confused people, and I think he's doing it deliberately.

I mean, he says: Don't vote; you can't vote by mail. But yet he got his absentee ballot delivered to his address in Florida. He requested it through the mail. But, yet, he's telling other people not to do it.

We're concerned about it. America's concerned about it.

This is not a partisan issue, either. He needs to understand that whatever happens and doesn't happen is going to impact people, whether they are Democrats or Republicans, or whether they claim no party affiliation at all.

Written by Sheena Goodyear with files from The Associated Press. Interview produced by Katie Geleff.