President Donald Trump renewed his attack on mail-in ballot voting during a rally in Phoenix on Tuesday, spewing false claims about widespread voter fraud and declaring to an audience composed mostly of young voters that the November election will be “the most corrupt election in the history of our country.”
“This will be, in my opinion, the most corrupt election in the history of our country, and we cannot let this happen,” Trump said to swaths of students at the Dream City Church in Phoenix on Tuesday night.
In a speech to “Students for Trump” a youth initiative of the conservative organization, Turning Point for Action, Trump took aim in what has become a common refrain about Democrats trying to “rig the election.” He accused Democrats of “sending tens of millions of ballots using the China virus as the excuse for allowing people not to go to the polls.”
Trump did not address the potential health concerns of spreading the virus at polling stations on Election Day. He instead opted to draw a false parallel between how voters cast their ballots in person in the two World Wars and how this, apparently, ought to still be the case in the age of a race to contain a wildly contagious virus that has claimed just about 120,000 lives in the United States.
“People went to the polls and voted during WWI, They went to the polls and voted during WWII. We can safely go to the polls and vote during COVID-19,” he said to a crow of young people who for the most part were not wearing face coverings.
Melissa DeRosa, a top aide to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, aptly pointed out on Twitter, however, that neither WWI nor WWII was “contagious,” after “Vox” reporter Aaron Rupar suggested that the comment made a skewed and inaccurate comparison.
Who is going to tell him that neither of the world wars were contagious? https://t.co/Bk2yAUCppq
— Melissa DeRosa (@melissadderosa) June 24, 2020
As Trump continues to deny the devastating impact of the coronavirus and the EU prepares to ban American travelers due to the president’s failure to properly get the outbreak under control, his attack on mail-in voting also contradicts bipartisan agreement among many officials across the country. Many lawmakers have moved to expand vote-by-mail as a safe option amid the health risks of the coronavirus pandemic. The practice has also been endorsed by the CDC.
