The Master Plan

How Trump incorporated a government agency into his election strategy

By Lincoln Arora

The United States government has seldom been an optimistic topic of discussion for the millions of American families who chat across the dinner table every evening, but in recent months, one of our last federally funded pillars of optimism has been crumbling. The United States Postal Service has consistently been among the most trusted governmental agencies. A 2019 Gallup poll found that 74% of Americans surveyed believed that the USPS was doing an “excellent” or “good” job, a higher rating than any other comparable federal department. In this seemingly apocalyptic year, however, a concerted effort to sabotage the agency by the Trump administration is crippling its effectiveness and tarnishing its reputation.

Scrutiny of these efforts reveals that they divide neatly into 3 stages of what appears to be a methodical endeavor culminating in election fraud. I’ve summarized those stages below:

Stage one: Turn COVID-19 into a politically polarizing issue by making baseless claims about the scope and severity of the virus.

Stage two: Isolate supporters from opponents based on voting method by assuring the Republican base that in-person voting is safer than mail-in voting.

Stage three: Use executive power to undermine the USPS and disproportionately disenfranchise mail-in Democrat voters.

When Donald Trump’s circus of a presidential term commenced in 2017, I was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. The notion of an incompetent and misinformed president, as frustrating as it can be at times, felt far more acceptable than the idea of a cunning, manipulative leader who takes advantage of the people who have pledged their support to him. After his initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic, I can unfortunately say with the utmost certainty that he is an example of the latter. Instead of a failed businessman and bungling founder of Trump University, we see President Trump as the man who somehow leveraged his numerous bankruptcies and abandoned ventures into becoming an international sensation with a global media empire.

According to revelations in Bob Woodward’s bombshell of a new book, Rage, President Trump was explicitly warned by his National Security Adviser on January 28 about the magnitude of the COVID-19 crisis, over two months before the pandemic took the United States by storm. The president was not ignorant of the harms this outbreak could cause. He knew the ramifications of this novel, deadly virus far earlier than the rest of us.

In April, Trump blocked a USPS plan to mail five face coverings to every household in the United States, claiming that such a move would cause mass frenzy. I can only wonder how to quantify the damage this did to the national coronavirus response in the early weeks of the pandemic. It is apparent that our president is more concerned with his approval rating than the lives of his constituents.

In May, the Trump-appointed USPS board of governors selected Louis DeJoy to be the newest Postmaster General. Immediately, Democrats called for an ethics investigation, as DeJoy still owns at least a $30 million stake in XPO Logistics, a U.S. Postal Service competitor.

In the months since his appointment, DeJoy has made his intentions clear. USPS facilities around the country, including in key swing states like Michigan and Florida, were instructed to dismantle hundreds of mail-sorting machines, citing “declining mail volume.” This seems imprudent to me, seeing as how the USPS is expected to receive the largest quantity of mail-in ballots it ever has this November. Dejoy also cut overtime and late trips for carriers, which has resulted in measurable slowdowns. In the postal service’s Eastern region, for example, the proportion of first-class letters delivered on time dropped from 91 percent to 79 percent in July. Mere months before timely vote counting will be needed to ensure election integrity, DeJoy’s policies are decelerating the mail. This is not an accident.

I previously referred to these sketchy affairs as a “sabotage,” but perhaps a better term for what the Trump administration is attempting to do to the USPS is a “weaponization.” The president and his team have subverted a publicly trusted organization and are using it as an instrument to orchestrate electoral success. Although I have grown to expect nothing less from the man who publicly implored the Russians to interfere in the 2016 election, his conniving actions in this arena strike fear into my heart. Never before have I feared for the sanctity of our democratic institutions as I do today.