Photo of Donald Trump

Trump Campaign Press Release - Postmaster General Debunks Democrats' Post Office Conspiracy Theories

August 21, 2020

"There has been no changes in any policy with regards to election mail."

Democrats know they need a new political insurance policy for November, so now they're pushing yet another unhinged conspiracy theory. This time, it's that President Trump is using the U.S. Postal Service to rig the 2020 election. Seriously.

During today's congressional hearing, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy calmly and factually ripped the Democrats' conspiracy theories to shreds. Here are the facts.

FACT: The removal of old post office boxes and sorting machines happened during the Obama-Biden Administration as well. It's "normal," common, and "data-driven."

  • DEJOY: Today, there's about 140,000 collection boxes out in the United States. Over the last 10 years, it averages about 3,500 a year, so 35,000 of them have been removed. It's a data-driven method... Every year they look at utilization of post boxes, they look at where they place new post boxes, they look at where communities grow... When I found out about it... we looked at the excitement it was creating so I decided to stop it and we'll pick it up after the election. But this is a normal process... it's been around for 50 years.
  • DEJOY: On the [sorting] machines, the machines we are speaking about, again mail volume is dropping... We evaluate our machine capacity, these machines run about 35% utilization. The mail volume is dropping very rapidly, especially during the Covid crisis and package volume is growing... We really are moving these machines out to make room to process packages. We still have hundreds of these machines everywhere and still not any kind of drain on capacity.

FACT: There have been no changes in policies for election mail.

  • DEJOY: First, I'd like to emphasize that there has been no changes in any policy with regards to election mail for the 2020 election.

FACT: The Post Office is not eliminating overtime pay.

  • DEJOY: "We've never eliminated overtime. It's not been curtailed by me or the leadership team. Since I've been here we spent $700 million on overtime. Overtime runs at a 13% rate before I got here, and it runs at a 13% rate now."

FACT: The process of closing post offices was already in place and was not ordered by Dejoy.He has suspended all closures until after the election.

  • DEJOY: I've confirmed post office closures is not a directive I gave. That was around before I got in. There's a process to that. When I found out about it... I suspended that until after the election.

Donald J. Trump, Trump Campaign Press Release - Postmaster General Debunks Democrats' Post Office Conspiracy Theories Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/345644

Simple Search of Our Archives