Former Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday that he believes President Donald Trump will try to delay November’s presidential election.
What We Know:
- “Mark my words: I think he is gonna try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can’t be held,” Biden said at a virtual fundraiser, according to a pool report. Biden has maintained the November election should not be postponed and has previously made similar comments.
- “Those are the incoherent conspiracy theory ramblings of a lost candidate who is out of touch with reality,” Tim Murtaugh, communications director for the Trump campaign, said in a statement Friday. “President Trump has been clear that the election will happen on November 3rd.”
- Biden said Congress needs to ensure that states have enough funding for expanding voting options during the pandemic. He referenced the Wisconsin primary, which went ahead with in-person voting earlier this month after courts halted Democratic efforts to delay the primary and extend the deadline for ballots to be returned by mail.
- Wisconsin was the only one of 11 states with April primaries that moved forward with in-person voting, after 10 delayed their primaries or shifted to by mail only voting.
- The former Vice President also accused Trump of “already trying to undermine the election with false claims of voter fraud”. Biden referenced a report by The Washington Post stating the Trump administration was considering leveraging an emergency coronavirus loan from Congress, which needs to be approved by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, to force changes at the US Postal Service.
- The move could allow the administration to influence how much the agency charges for delivering packages and how it manages its finances, according to the Post. “You can be assured between Trump and the Russians there is going to be an attempt to interfere” in the election, Biden said.
It would be virtually impossible for Trump to succeed with such a move. Congress sets the election day statutorily, and the Democratic-controlled House would never agree to move it back. Any executive order moving the election would meet a certain constitutional challenge in court. The 20th Amendment to the Constitution sets January 20 as Inauguration Day.
