President Donald Trump on Thursday launched into an unprompted and untruthful rant about the integrity of the American voting system, unfavorably comparing the country he leads to developing nations because states continue to allow postal ballots instead of enacting restrictions that would make it easier for his party to win.
Trump was answering questions from reporters at an Oval Office appearance alongside EPA administrator Lee Zeldin when he was asked to comment on the Democratic National Committee’s release of a controversial assessment of their losing effort to defeat his re-election bid two years ago.
Instead of commenting on the report’s conclusions, he claimed American elections “are so rigged.”
“We have to do something about it, and we’re going to do something about it,” he said.
He added that Congress should enact the election restriction bill he and his allies have dubbed the “Save America Act” to put onerous requirements on voter registrations and ban voting by mail — a method widely used in multiple states that often elect Democrats to public office.
The president justified his demand by citing a recent incident in Maryland, a heavily Democratic state, in approximately 500,000 voters received primary ballots for a party other than the one for which they are registered.
In a Truth Social post, he claimed the state had sent out “500,000 illegal mail-in ballots” and called for a Justice Department investigation.
The Maryland Board of Elections has attributed the mix-up to an error by the printing contractor responsible for printing and mailing the ballots, while Trump has falsely alleged that the whole matter is evidence of fraud in the Old Line State.
“They were corrupt, they said the printer made a mistake, I don’t believe that, and they got caught with 500,000 mail-in ballots that were corrupt,” Trump said.
“We’ve got to stop it. We have a country that has a very corrupt.. we have more corrupt elections than third world countries have, and we ought to get smart.”
He then pivoted to an oft-repeated litany of claims about the Democratic Party, including his unsubstantiated believe that opposition to his presidency is bolstered by office-holders who win their elections by subterfuge rather than by garnering a majority of votes.
“I don’t know what these people are thinking, the only way they can win is the cheat, and that’s what they want to do, and we ought to pass the Save America Act,” he said.