Trump says he’s holding up coronavirus aid to stop Postal Service funding over mail-in voting

In an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business Thursday, President Trump said that one of his sticking points over a coronavirus relief package is funding for the Postal Service, because Democrats want to budget money for voting by mail.

Video Transcript

MARIA BARTIROMO: Mr. President, you just mentioned spending.

DONALD TRUMP: Of course she's done so many bad things--

MARIA BARTIROMO: I want to get your take on the stimulus.

DONALD TRUMP: --who knows whether or not she'll get there?

MARIA BARTIROMO: And what happened in terms of the breakdown in talks on the stimulus. Tell me about that. Because that's another thing that they were complaining about you yesterday, saying, well, he's not there negotiating, we want to get something done. The Democrats have put on the table this $3 trillion plan. What specifically are they pushing for that is causing this breakdown in any deals? Nancy Pelosi said that the Democrats want to-- and the White House are still miles apart on stimulus.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, they're right. And it's their fault. They want $3.5 billion for something that'll turn out to be fraudulent. That's election money, basically. They want $3.5 trillion-- billion-- for the mail in votes, OK, universal mail-in ballots, $3.5 tril-- they want $25 billion, billion for 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.

Now in the meantime, they aren't getting there. By the way, those are just two items. 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. And you see how bad it's been with this Carolyn Maloney scam. She scammed her way into an election. She probably lost. But they said mail-in ballots. It's all mixed up. Patterson, New Jersey, same thing.

Yesterday, Virginia, 500,000 applications for ballots got sent to everybody. Nobody even knows. Got sent to dogs, got sent to dead people. Nobody has no idea what happened. They said, oh, we made a mistake, I'm sorry. 500,000 ballots sent in Virginia. How do you feel about Virginia, going in there and you have 500,000 phony ballot applications? And this is all over. I can give you--

MARIA BARTIROMO: So this is what's holding it up? They want--

DONALD TRUMP: No, no, no. That's only one aspect of it.

MARIA BARTIROMO: So Mr. President, this is what's holding up money for the American people? They want mail-in votings and they want money for the post office. This is one of the sticking point that's holding back stimulus for Americans during this coronavirus--

DONALD TRUMP: Oh, yeah, that's one of them.

MARIA BARTIROMO: --the Democrats wanting money for the post office for mail-in voting.

DONALD TRUMP: That's one of them. That's right. How would you like to have-- Maria, how would you like to have $3.5 billion, billion, to mail-in voting? Billion. So if you didn't have it, you wouldn't-- do you know how much money that is? Nobody has any idea. You know, people, oh, $3.5 billion.

They want $25 billion for the post office. Because the post office is going to have to go to town to get these ridiculous ballots in. You know, there's nothing wrong with getting out and voting. You get out and vote. They voted during World War I and World War II. And they should have voter ID, because the Democrats scammed the system. But two of the items are the post office and the $3.5 billion for mail-in voting.

Now if we don't make a deal, that means they don't get their money. That means they can't have universal mail-in voting. They just can't have it.

MARIA BARTIROMO: I see.

DONALD TRUMP: So you know, sort of a crazy thing.