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Late-night hosts blast Trump for his comments on mail-in voting, post office funding

President Donald Trump.Chris Kleponis/Bloomberg

President Trump pledged to block funding for the United States Postal Service in the next coronavirus relief package on Thursday. Without the emergency funding, he said, a mail-in voting election could not take place.

His comments immediately generated backlash from Democrats, who accused the president of attempting to meddle with the election for his own political gain.

But elected officials weren’t the only ones sounding the alarm about the perceived threat to democracy, with several late-night hosts — including Jimmy Fallon, Trevor Noah, and Stephen Colbert — making a point to both ridicule Trump and point out the consequences of an already weakened postal service as the presidential election looms.

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Democrats are aiming to secure $25 billion to support the postal service and another $3.6 billion to implement vote-by-mail programs in the next virus relief package. Talks between the two major parties over another economic stimulus package have stalled as the coronavirus pandemic continues to worsen.

“Those are just two items. But if they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it,” Trump said during an interview with Fox Business Thursday morning.

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah

On his show Thursday night, Trevor Noah said he believes America sometimes gets “so caught up in its own exceptionalism,” that the nation largely ignores warning signs from other countries, pointing to social media being used during Brexit to manipulate voters into electing “crazy candidates who promised to fix everything” and how if more attention was paid to China, the United States “would have realized” the virus could come into the country and wreak equal havoc.

“And if America might think that rigged elections are something that only happens in other places, well, in reality, it’s already starting to rear its ugly head right here,” Noah said.

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After playing a clip of Trump’s interview with Fox, Noah said, “I’ve never seen a villain give away a plan like that without seeing James Bond tied to a chair in front of him,” a mocking comparison similar to the one Jimmy Fallon made on his own show Thursday night.

“People, this is insane. Trump got impeached for trying to secretly rig the election,” Noah said. “And his response is to go, ‘I learned my lesson. I won’t rig an election in secret ever again.‘”

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

Before Fallon launched into his own commentary on Trump’s admission that he would block postal cash to stop mail-in votes, he first spent some time highlighting the president’s recent attacks on a number of women, namely the presumptive Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris, as well as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

“Mad woman, not smart, and stone-cold crazy,” Fallon ticked off the insults used by Trump. “Seriously, if you had a co-worker who came in and said that kind of stuff about women, they wouldn’t be your co-worker by the end of the day.”

Fallon then, like Noah, proceeded to play Trump’s interview from earlier in the day.

After the clip ended, Fallon joked, “Trump’s like one of those movie villains who spend so much time explaining his plan out loud that the good guy manages to shimmy out of his handcuffs.”

Many across the country were stunned by the president’s remarks, Fallon said, quipping that “millions of Americans” wrote Trump about it.

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“But [Trump] was like, ‘Weird. I didn’t get anything,’” Fallon said. “But this is nice: When he found out Trump was meddling in the election himself, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin was like, ‘They grow up so fast.‘”

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert said Trump despises mail-in voting “and just regular voting, too” because polling currently has him trailing presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden by 10 points — and even higher in some swing states — along with the fact that due to health risks posed by the pandemic, many will likely choose to cast their ballot by mail.

“So after three years spent damaging everything from international relationships to ethical norms to the Department of Justice, Trump is coming after something people actually care about,” Colbert said. “He’s destroying the post office.”

Even for Trump, Colbert said, vowing to block funding for the United States Postal Service is a “bold move,” given how popular and necessary the government agency is.

“Being able to send mail is a fundamental function of any working society,” Colbert said. “For Pete’s sake, they had reliable postal service in Ancient Egypt.”

Colbert then listed out a number of the drastic cuts that have been made to the postal service recently, including the reassignment or sidelining of “almost two dozen high-ranking postal officials,” sorting machines being deactivated, and certain mail deliveries being halted.

“The point is, we can’t let Trump get away with undermining our democracy by destroying a basic function of government,” Colbert said. “Establishing post offices is in the Constitution. Congress needs to stand firm and protect the United States Postal Service with the same fervor the right uses to defend guns.”

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Despite Trump repeatedly criticizing the practice of voting by mail, he requested a mail-in ballot for Florida’s Tuesday primary election.