Trump suggests delaying presidential election as dire economic data released

Donald Trump has floated the idea of delaying November’s presidential election, repeating his false claim that widespread voting by mail from home would result in a “fraudulent” result.

Trump made the incendiary proposal, which is not within his power to order, in a Thursday morning tweet that came as the country reeled from disastrous economic news and a coronavirus death toll that now exceeds 150,000 people.

The suggestion prompted swift and fervent rejections from experts and critics, as well as high-profile members of his own party.

Trump claimed without evidence that “universal mail-in voting” would lead to “the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT election in history”. The president also claimed the result would be a “great embarrassment to the USA”, and raised the prospect of a postponement. “Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” he tweeted.

But the US constitution grants the power to set an election date to Congress, not the president.

“No, Mr. President. No. You don’t have the power to move the election. Nor should it be moved,” Ellen Weintraub, a commissioner with the US Federal Election Commission, tweeted. “States and localities are asking you and Congress for funds so they can properly run the safe and secure elections all Americans want. Why don’t you work on that?”

Michael Beschloss, a historian of the US presidency, tweeted: “Never in American history – not even during the Civil War and World War II – has there been a successful move to ‘Delay the Election’ for President.”

At a White House press briefing later on Thursday, Trump denied that he wanted the election to be postponed but again questioned mail-in voting, insisting that he he did not “want to have to wait for three months and then find out that the ballots are all missing and the election doesn’t mean anything”.

He added: “Do I want to see a date change? No. But I don’t want to see a crooked election. This election will be the most rigged election in history, if that happens.”

Election experts say that all forms of voter fraud are rare. In 2017, the Brennan Center for Justice ranked the risk of ballot fraud at 0.00004% to 0.0009%, based on studies of past elections.

Analysts said the president’s chief objective was to sow doubt about the legitimacy of the outcome. Richard Painter, a former White House chief ethics lawyer, said: “He’s just trying to intimidate people. He wants to suppress the vote as much as he can and so he wants to discourage mail-in and, of course, he wants to complain about the election being rigged if he loses.

“He pulled this in 2016 – he thought he was going to lose that and he said it was a rigged election. So this is just the same old Trump playbook but he cannot change the date of the election because it’s set by statute. Congress is not going to change the statute.”

Jon Meacham, a presidential biographer and historian, told the MSNBC network: “The delay thing may just be an entry point to an argument, largely emotional but nevertheless immensely disruptive, to setting up a November where he is crying foul and crooked election and fake news and fake president about Joe Biden if Biden wins.”

Critics denounced the timing of Trump’s election comments as a distraction that came amid the disastrous economic report and hours ahead of the funeral of the revered civil rights and voting rights leader Congressman John Lewis. It also coincided with the preparations for a retreat by federal law enforcement agents from Portland, Oregon.

The agents had been called an “occupying force” and “Trump’s troops” after being sent in to tackle protests sustained daily since the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May, which triggered nationwide demonstrations and a fresh surge of support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Related: Why Trump cannot delay the election – plus the truth about mail-in voting

The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, a Democrat, told Politico: “He’s always trying to divert attention from his overwhelming failure on Covid … And it’s not going to happen.”

The Democratic House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, tweeted quoting the US constitution, stating: “The Congress may determine the Time of choosing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.”

Congressional Republicans also quickly sought to distance themselves from the president’s suggestion. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, told a Kentucky television station that the election date was “set in stone”.

Senator Marco Rubio, a loyalist on most issues, said: “I wish he hadn’t said that, but it’s not going to change: We are going to have an election in November.”

Lindsey Graham, normally a cheerleader for the president, told CNN he did not think Trump’s tweet about the election was “a particularly good idea”.

The Democratic representative Zoe Lofgren, who chairs the House committee overseeing election security, rejected the idea of a delay.

“Only Congress can change the date of our elections,” Lofgren said in an email to the Reuters new agency, adding: “Under no circumstances will we consider doing so to accommodate the President’s inept and haphazard response to the coronavirus pandemic, or give credence to the lies and misinformation he spreads regarding the manner in which Americans can safely and securely cast their ballots.”

The Washington state attorney general, Bob Ferguson, issued a statement saying there was no evidence that mail-in ballots increased voter fraud.

He said: “President Trump’s statement that he may unlawfully delay the November election is undemocratic, un-American, and, sadly, entirely predictable.’”

And added: “For months, my legal team has been preparing for the possibility that the president might attempt to unlawfully delay the election. If that happens, we will see President Trump in court – and we will win.”

The secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, who was appearing before the Senate foreign relations committee at the time Trump’s tweet went out, sought to dodge questions on whether the president had the authority to delay the election.

“I’m not going to enter a legal judgment on that on the fly,” Pompeo, a Harvard Law School graduate, said. “The Department of Justice and others will make that legal determination.”

The justice department does not have the power to change the date of the election.

The idea that the US president should suggest a delay in a ballot that will decide whether he stays in the White House for another four years is certain to inflame fears that he is preparing for a fierce battle that could threaten the integrity of US democracy. Recent polls have him falling significantly behind his Democratic rival Joe Biden.

Trump has already indicated that he might not accept a Biden victory on election day, 3 November. In a recent interview with Fox News Sunday he declined to commit to abiding by the results.

The idea that voting from home in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic would lead to an explosion of fraud has become a growing theme for Trump. Most states have a long history of administering mail-in voting, without any significant incidence of fraud.

Trump himself and numerous members of his administration, including Vice-President Mike Pence, have voted by mail.

Trump was, however, “just raising a question”, a spokesman for his election campaign told CNN.

“The president is just raising a question about the chaos Democrats have created with their insistence on all mail-in voting,” his campaign spokesman, Hogan Gidley, said in a statement, according to the TV cable network.