Trump’s Dump on USPS

On Friday, May 19, 2017, CNN’s Anderson Cooper finally spoke truth to one of Trump’s most egregious bootlickers — and smacked him with a mighty dose of veracity.

The topic of discussion back then involved James Comey, the FBI director Trump had publicly denounced as “a nut job.” Of course, as the network’s resident Trump sycophant, fluffy- haired Jeffrey Lord couldn’t help but excuse POTUS 45. He marveled at Trump’s spirited sagacity and brushed aside any obvious legal and ethical concerns Trump should have heeded. But Lord’s allegiance about Trump’s unalienable right to smear anyone and everyone within striking distance bothered Cooper.

He told Lord, “You can’t defend what the President of the United States just said.”

But Lord could and did.

“I don’t care what he says to the Russians,” Lord replied. “I mean, he’s the President of the United States. If he wants to say that, Barack Obama wants to say whatever, if George Bush says I looked into his eyes —“

Then Cooper interrupted him with this valid observation: “If Trump took a dump on his desk, you would defend it.”

Although Lord thought the comment was funny, Cooper had to later apologize for it. So genuine concern about this lemming-like loyalty for a fascist demagogue got lost because Cooper’s analogy grossed-out too many viewers? How typical yet how unfortunate. Now more than 3 years later, America has a more serious concern, one its voters never could have envisioned.

If Trump took a dump on The US Postal Service, would our mail-in ballots still get counted in the upcoming 2020 Presidential Election?

Trump has made it clear that he intends to mortally defund, then ultimately demolish, the USPS. His intent was no midnight tweet or rambling tangent from one of his press conferences. He voiced his strategy during an interview with Maria Bartiromo on the Fox Business Network. He didn’t hide or sugarcoat his reasons for wanting to block financial aid to The Postal Service, either.

“If we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money,” he declared on-air. “That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting; they just can’t have it.”

Furthermore, these mail-in ballots, according to Trump, would be fraudulent. Never mind that he’s never given any evidence to show that mail-in ballots would indeed be fraudulent. He continues to spout that the upcoming election will be “rigged” because he knows the more he keeps repeating the lie, the more likely voters will believe it to be true. And, if the election is going to be rigged — thanks to the Post Office — why bother to mail in your ballots?

Why should voters even try when the President keeps saying that voting by mail is going to be “the greatest rigged election in history?”

That’s the effect POTUS 45 is going for anyway. It’s not that he’s trying to discourage his loyal followers from voting for him. It’s that he figures he’s going to lose the election. Then when that happens he can cry, “Voter fraud! The Post Office screwed me with the mail-in ballots! It’s a disaster! It’s rigged! RECOUNT!”

In the wake of rising cases and deaths in this COVID-19 pandemic, POTUS 45 only wants to make sure he gets re-elected. Forget about making things easier or more accessible for voters. He not only wants to block funding that would ensure the handling of an unprecedented upsurge of mail-in ballots, he also wants to create fear and doubt about the Postal Service itself. That way, when he loses the 2020 election and has to move out of the White House, he’ll have an excuse (and P.O. scapegoat) not to budge.

He wants to cultivate chaos in plain sight.

Now federal funding that would ensure USPS to successfully function and get the mail-in ballots counted in this Presidential Election has been blocked by GOP lemmings in the Senate. Like Jeffrey Lord, they only want to please their master in the Oval Office and do his bidding. Why?

Why have Republicans serving in Congress, as well as in other state political positions, remained so eerily quiet about their fearless leader’s latest dump on the U.S. Constitution?

Their silence comes from partisan politics, pure and simple. They WANT the Postal Service to die. They have always WANTED the Postal Service to die. They’ve been trying to kill it for years, ever since Reagan got elected. They want to get it out of the auspices of government and into the hands of rich businessmen(i.e., their rich superdonor friends) so it can finally “make money.” In other words, they’ve always wanted to privatize The Post Office, just as they’ve wanted to privatize everything else.

And their long-term efforts have come straight out of the GOP playbook.

First came the old Congressional chokehold. Funding for the Postal Service was gradually reduced, forcing rates for service to slowly increase. Then came the squeeze play. GOP logic went something like this: Postal rates are going up. The Post Office “keeps losing money.” And yet, there’s a big pile of retirement funds and benefits for P.O. employees? Not on our watch! So monies that used to be designated especially for P.O. workers got spent on other things, thanks to contrived GOP budgeting.

That way, whenever Republican Senators and Representatives started their rants about the major financial inefficiency of the Post Office as the “big money loser,” they could point to this serious lack of money…a serious lack that they themselves perpetrated.

How deliciously diabolical! First, funding that should have been appropriated for the USPS gets cut. Then the same legislators who slashed the funding blame the Post Office for not having any money. It’s the same finger pointing par excellence that Trump has been officially doing ever since he got inaugurated.

In POTUS 45, the GOP machine has found the perfect accomplice. At last, a President who can help them defund and destroy any government entity they don’t like! Trump has become the perfect Killer Angel for Republicans. He’s the iconoclast they’ve all been waiting — and praying — for.

In the past few weeks, however, much has been said and written about Trump’s genuine ire for the Postal Service. He still blames USPS for his losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. Why? He claims mail-in voter fraud, even though no proof exists to back his claims. He still blames the USPS’s financial woes on a shipping deal with Amazon that, he believes, unfairly benefits his sworn enemy Jeff Bezos (also owner of “The Washington Post.”) Although no evidence proves wrongdoing in either case, Trump continues to harbor these grudges.

Then in June, 2020, Trump appointed bootlicking businessman Louis DeJoy to the Office of Postmaster General. FYI, fellow bootlicker Steven Mnuchin — U.S. Treasury Secretary who couldn’t help but notice DeJoy had given millions to Republican causes — brought DeJoy to Trump’s attention. Of course, DeJoy’s questionable stock options in USPS competitors United Parcel Service and Amazon were ignored. Of course, he got the job. This administration has never let lack of experience stand in the way of hiring if the applicant has money and swears to do Trump’s bidding.

Already at USPS, DeJoy has cut overtime hours, halted late (sometimes essential) delivery trips, reduced numbers of working employees, shut down sorting machines, removed mail boxes, and has undoubtedly done everything Trump “suggested” to slow down the speed of mail delivery and service. That is, he’s done whatever he could to scare citizens from voting by mail. As usual, wealthy sycophants make the best sycophants.

Even if Congress wants to give DeJoy his walking papers, he still has to abide by the decisions of the USPS Board of Governors…and surprise! That board could be teeming with wall-to wall Republicans also eager to do Trump’s bidding. The law might decree this Board to be apolitical, but who knows? We live in TrumpWorld now.

Good luck with those upcoming hearings, Speaker Pelosi. As of this writing, DeJoy has promised not to do any more “slowdowns” or “modernizing” until the November elections are over. He even said he’d show up for those hearings on Capitol Hill. That’s what he said, anyway. Who knows what he’ll actually do?

Any opinions or concerns voters like me might have will inevitably get lost by Trump’s denials. As in No, I never said that. No, I’d never do that to the Postal Service. It was just a joke, look it up in the Manual. His denials usually rev up right before he goes ahead and does what he initially said he was going to do in the first place.

So, is Trump’s dump on the Postal Service yet another turd in the punchbowl of his fascist demagoguery?

Or is it a real stink bomb from the bottom drawer of his resolute desk of dictatorship?

Whatever you want to call his vendetta du jour, you’ll have to admit The Post Office has been on the Republican chopping block for decades. Killing our nation’s postal service has been on the GOP Wishlist since Ronnie’s reign in the 1980’s. While Trump alone might represent a real threat to our voting rights, he’s also become a willing tool for enabling(and greedy) Republicans.