‘Delay the election,’ Donald Trump tweets, an idea even Republicans swiftly reject
- Critics dismiss suggestion as distraction from devastating economic news, but legal experts fear remarks could undermine faith in voting process
- US president does not have the authority to delay an election – only Congress can change the date
US President Donald Trump raised the idea Thursday of delaying the November 3 US elections, an idea immediately rejected by both Democrats and his fellow Republicans in Congress – the sole branch of government with the authority to make such a change.
Critics and even Trump’s allies dismissed the notion as an unserious attempt to distract from devastating economic news, but some legal experts warned that his repeated attacks could undermine his supporters’ faith in the election process.
Trump’s statement on Twitter comes as the United States is enduring the greatest crises of a generation: a coronavirus pandemic that has claimed more than 150,000 lives, a crippling recession sparked by the outbreak and nationwide protests against police violence and racism.
On Thursday morning, the government reported the worst US economic contraction since the Great Depression: a GDP drop of 9.5 per cent in the second quarter, for an annualised rate of 32.9 per cent.
Obviously he just cannot help himself … It’s awful. It’s starting to look like he doesn’t even want to win
Trump – who opinion polls show trailing his Democratic challenger, the former vice-president Joe Biden – said that he would not trust the results of an election that included widespread mail voting, a measure that many observers see as critical given the coronavirus pandemic. Without evidence, he claimed that mail voting would be rife with fraud.