Although he regularly claims mail-in ballots are used by Democrats to rig elections, President Donald Trump was called out for voting by mail in Florida's election on Tuesday—and saying it's okay that he did it because he's the "president."
Palm Beach County records show that Trump cast a mail-in ballot earlier this week in the special election for Florida’s House District 87, the district that includes his Mar-a-Lago residence. He also voted by mail in the January primary for the same race.
Just one day earlier, he told the audience at a roundtable event in Memphis that “mail-in voting means mail-in cheating," pledging that "we got to do something about it all.”
When questioned, he said:
"You may not use mail-in ballots, you probably said. But you know what, I did. You know why? Because I'm President of the United States and because of the fact that I'm President of the United States, I did a mail-in ballot for elections that took place in Florida."
"Because I felt I should be here instead of taking in the beautiful sunshine. ... I decided I was going to vote by mail-in ballot because I couldn't be there because I had a lot of different things. We have exceptions for mail-in ballots, you do know that?"
You can hear what he said in the video below.
But as the reporter pointed out, he was actually at Mar-a-Lago during the voting period, and in fact, as Politico confirmed, cast his mail-in ballot from Palm Beach County, when he could have voted early in person.
Republicans have railed against early voting and vote-by-mail procedures in recent years, spurred by Trump's lies that they helped Democrats "steal" the 2020 election.
Research shows early voting greatly increases voter turnout and a study from Stanford University’s Democracy and Polarization Lab published in April 2020 found that contrary to the widely-held belief among the GOP that vote-by-mail gives Democrats an advantage over Republicans, vote-by-mail options do not benefit one party more than another.
But an angry Trump fueled conspiracies around voting procedures that have led to the disparity that currently exists with the early and absentee vote being dominated by Democrats and the same-day vote by Republicans.
He has pushed to eliminate no-excuse mail voting as a central goal of the "SAVE America Act", a sweeping federal elections bill that faces long odds of passing in the Senate. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court heard arguments Monday in a Republican-backed case seeking to impose stricter deadlines on the counting of mail ballots.
Many have called out his hypocrisy and entitled response.
White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales defended Trump's move in a statement, saying that "as everyone knows, the President is a resident of Palm Beach and participates in Florida elections, but he obviously primarily lives at the White House in Washington, D.C." She called Trump's decision to cast a mail-in ballot a "non-story."
Trump previously voted by mail in 2020 and when asked at the time how he reconciled his criticism of mail-in voting with his own use of it, Trump said he voted that way because he was in the White House and unable to travel to Florida to cast a ballot in person.
Trump said "there's a big difference between somebody who is out of state and does a ballot and everything is sealed and certified and everything else," claiming without evidence that large numbers of people were fraudulently filling out ballots at home.
He added that despite his own use of the method, he still believed mail-in voting was "a terrible thing," saying he thought people should vote in person.
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