With the 2020 election only months away, President Donald Trump is continuing his smear campaign against voting by mail as Democrats call for expanded absentee voting measures in the face of the pandemic.
Trump falsely insists that these expanded measures will lead to widespread voter fraud on a scale massive enough to tip the election in favor of presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Trump makes a distinction between absentee ballot voting and voting by mail, though there is no substantive difference.
During remarks at a UPS hub in Atlanta, Georgia on Wednesday, Trump asserted that if the United States could hold a traditional election during World Wars I and II, they could hold a traditional election during a pandemic.
Watch below.
Trump said:
"You have to be careful everywhere where they're doing [mail-in voting]. We went through a first world war and a second world war and people went to vote. Now they're saying let's use this as a chance not to vote, and there's been tremendous corruption. Tremendous corruption on mail-in ballots, so absentee ballot: great. Mail-in ballot: absolutely not good. It makes no sense."
Trump used the World Wars as an example for the feasibility of widespread in-person voting, but he failed to acknowledge that soldiers have been voting by mail since the Civil War, including during World Wars I and II.
People didn't hesitate to fact check him.
People also pointed out that these wars weren't fought on American soil, so there wasn't anything keeping Americans from voting in person.
Not to mention the fact that war is different from a highly contagious virus transmitted through in-person interaction.
Trump, a registered Florida voter, voted by mail in the state's primary, despite being in the state at the time.