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Trump Gets Brutally Fact-Checked After He Uses Voting During WWI and WWII as Case Against Mail-In Voting
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: We went through a first world war and a second world war and people went to vote. Now they’re saying let’s u… https://t.co/PF1xF58gsk— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn Torabi) 1594843275.0
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.
@Acyn Trump seems to ignore that all those soldiers that went to vote were able to vote by mail. Vote by mail /abse… https://t.co/3WmNHX9d28— lawhawk #maskingforafriend (@lawhawk #maskingforafriend) 1594843385.0
@Acyn Soldiers have been voting by mail for 200 years. No problems.— Patti Coppersmith (@Patti Coppersmith) 1594844948.0
@Acyn Mail voting was instituted during the Civil War.— Crow Magnon (@Crow Magnon) 1594845250.0
People also pointed out that these wars weren't fought on American soil, so there wasn't anything keeping Americans from voting in person.
@Acyn Was there a land war in mainland America that we all forgot about? Were people dodging bullets and heavy ordi… https://t.co/hdu6n0ULdd— Michael Marshall Smith (@Michael Marshall Smith) 1594843673.0
@Acyn We’re there air raids at the polls and I somehow missed it? How do you compare a threat to your life from acr… https://t.co/muCKUzhvls— Down the Rabbit Hole (@Down the Rabbit Hole) 1594864933.0
@Acyn We weren't getting bombed. We weren't in any danger.— Michele (@Michele) 1594849367.0
@Acyn My grandpa used to tell me about the time he had to fight through a Nazi machine gun nest to get to the polls.— Dyl-Pickle210 (@Dyl-Pickle210) 1594844472.0
@Acyn The polling places weren't battlefields in WW1 and WW2.— Tim McDevitt (@Tim McDevitt) 1594843806.0
@Acyn It’s not like bullets were flying at the polling places. It was happening in Europe. And dying in wartime isn’t an infectious disease.— WhittakerWalt (@WhittakerWalt) 1594844587.0
Not to mention the fact that war is different from a highly contagious virus transmitted through in-person interaction.
@Acyn Yeah, the people back in America during the world wars were incredibly brave. Despite the immense risk of cat… https://t.co/lvIN4d5n1q— Joel Klebanoff (@Joel Klebanoff) 1594843576.0
@Acyn Right, the extremely contagious World Wars.— Jordy Maze (@Jordy Maze) 1594846586.0
@Acyn The worst thing about those world wars is how contagious they were.— Margaret (@Margaret) 1594908628.0
Trump, a registered Florida voter, voted by mail in the state's primary, despite being in the state at the time.