In a memo to United States Postal Service employees this week obtained by CNN, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy admitted that there have been "unintended consequences" from the procedural changes he's enacted. He also declared that they are necessary. DeJoy, who has no postal service experience and presumably got the job because he donated big to the Trump campaign and has no moral objections to being a tool put in place to destroy one of the nation's most vital and cherished institutions, wrote that "this transformative initiative has had unintended consequences that impacted our overall service levels."
But, he said, it wasn't just his sabotage to blame. "However, recent changes are not the only contributing factors. Over the years we have grown undisciplined in our mail and package processing schedules, causing an increase in delayed mail between processing facilities and delivery units." He insisted that the financial situation for the USPS is "dire" and that critics of his actions " are quick to point to our finance, yet they offer no solutions." The Democratic House passed emergency coronavirus stimulus legislation in May, which Mitch McConnell has ignored for 91 days, that included $25 billion in funding for the USPS, something that DeJoy's employees will be very well aware of.
They'll also be aware that their boss has been meeting regularly with Republican leaders as well as reshuffling USPS leadership in an apparent bid to get people who would resist his efforts out of the way. They also can't miss the fact that they're losing equipment, from sorting machines to the actual shelving they use to sort mail manually.
And if it wasn't clear enough to postal workers that all of this was extremely political, Trump told them so directly this week. "They want $25 billion, billion, for the Post Office. Now they need that money in order to make the Post Office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots," said Trump. "But if they don't get those two items that means you can't have universal mail-in voting because they're not equipped to have it.”
DeJoy's ham-handed response is as transparent as Trump's. He just lies. Last week he said that the USPS is "not slowing down election mail or any other mail" and has "ample capacity to deliver all election mail securely and on time." He also said that while he has a "good relationship" with Trump, "the notion that I would ever make decisions concerning the Postal Service at the direction of the President or anyone else in the administration is wholly off-base." Don't believe your lying eyes, believe another Trump lackey.
He lies about the efforts of Democrats to fund the USPS. He lies about his own motivations and his fealty to Trump. He lies about the delays he is creating in mail delivery. At the same time that his own agency is warning that in Pennsylvania, there's "a risk that ballots requested near the deadline under state law will not be returned by mail in time to be counted under your laws as we understand them."
It doesn't get more transparent than that. Trump doesn't care how many people he kills or how many institutions he destroys—including the very foundations of democracy in this country—to stay in power. And the Republican Party is aiding and abetting him.
