Extract from The Guardian
Late-night hosts react to Trump’s damning admission that he’s undermining the USPS to prevent mail-in voting in the election
Stephen Colbert
“Trump despises mail-in voting – and just regular voting, too – because he’s way behind in the polls and he knows that due to the pandemic, tens of millions of us will have to vote by mail,” said Stephen Colbert of Donald Trump’s attacks on the US Postal Service (USPS). “So after three years of damaging everything from international relationships, to ethical norms, to the Department of Justice, Trump’s coming after something people actually care about: he’s destroying the post office.
“Now he’s just a villain in a children’s book,” the Late Show host added. “Next, he’s gonna ban rollerskating and build a laser to blow up Halloween.”
Still, “even for him, this is a bold move”, Colbert said, given that the postal service is the most popular governmental agency in the country, with a 91% favorability rating and that sending mail is “a fundamental function of any working society”.
At a Wednesday night briefing, Trump said he wouldn’t sign a Democrat-led spending bill providing $25bn to ensure voters can mail in ballots because “it’s very simple – how are they going to do [mail-in voting] if they don’t have the money to do it.
“You’re not supposed to say the cheating part out loud!” Colbert exclaimed.
“We can’t let Trump get away with undermining our democracy by destroying a basic function of government,” he added, noting that the post office was explicitly established in the constitution. “Congress needs to stand firm and protect the United States Postal Service with the same fervor the right uses to defend guns.”
Trevor Noah
“Sometimes America gets so caught up in its own exceptionalism, that it ignores warnings it could be taking from other countries,” Trevor Noah said on Thursday’s Daily Show. “If America paid attention to Brexit, it would have realized how social media can be used to bamboozle people into voting for crazy candidates who promise to fix everything. If America paid more attention to China, they would have realized that coronavirus is something that could come to this country and screw everything up, as opposed to something that only happens overseas.
“And if America might think that rigged elections are something that only happen in other places,” he continued, “well, in reality, it’s already starting to rear its ugly head right here.”
Noah referred to the Trump administration’s escalating attacks on the USPS, a government institution critical to ensuring safe and fair voting in the November election. Without a functioning postal service, there’s no mail-in voting – a motivation to undermine the agency that Trump isn’t even hiding any more.
“They want $3.5bn for something that will turn out to be fraudulent,” Trump falsely claimed to the Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo on why he’s opposed to a coronavirus relief bill that boosts funding to the post office. “Now, they need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots … But if they don’t get those two items that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting.
“Goddamn, I’ve never seen a villain give away a plan like that without seeing James Bond tied to a chair in front of him,” Noah responded. “This is insane – Trump got impeached for trying to secretly rig the election, and his response is to go, ‘I learned my lesson. I won’t rig an election in secret ever again.’”
Trump’s “effort to sabotage mail-in voting” presents a “real threat to America’s election”, Noah concluded, although there’s one upside to his brazen admission: it “gives Americans an opportunity to fight back and prepare”.
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers mocked Republicans’ struggles to find a consistent line of attack on Biden’s vice-presidential pick, the California senator Kamala Harris. The Fox News host Sean Hannity, for example, was “straining to find something to criticize” with Biden’s first appearance with Harris and tried to drum up outrage by criticizing Biden for using a script.
“Oh my goodness, a script?! For a politician? What’s next, a podium?” Meyers deadpanned. “At least when Biden uses a script, he can actually read it.”
The clip demonstrated how conservative pundits “really have no idea how to attack Harris”, said Meyers. “They’re flailing.”
Trump, meanwhile, attacked Harris for being “nasty” to supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh during his heated confirmation hearings in fall of 2018. “I thought she was the meanest, the most horrible, most disrespectful of anybody in the US Senate,” Trump said in a press conference.
“These guys love to joke about ‘liberal tears’, but they are the whiniest little babies in the world,” Meyers responded. “Trump sounds like he’s sniffling to his mom after getting home from the playground – ‘She was the meanest most horrible most disrespectful bully, she gave me a wedgie!’”
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