Obama accuses Trump of trying to 'actively kneecap' USPS ahead of election

Former President Barack Obama isn't happy with all the changes afoot at the United States Postal Service.

In an interview on Friday, Obama urged lawmakers to fight against what he called President Trump's attempt to "actively kneecap the Postal Service," reports NBC News. Trump has repeatedly falsely claimed mail-in voting is unsafe, and on Thursday said he didn't want more funding for the USPS so that universal mail-in voting couldn't be set up before November's election.

Obama said action was necessary, both by members of Congress and citizens, to "protect the integrity" of the presidential election.

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"What we've never seen before is a president say, 'I'm going to try to actively kneecap the Postal Service to encourage voting, and I will be explicit about the reason I'm doing it.' That's sort of unheard of, right?" said Obama. He also accused Republicans of trying "to discourage people's votes from counting" with other measures like gerrymandering and voter identification restrictions.

The Trump administration recently installed major Trump donor Louis DeJoy as Postmaster General, and his campaign has sued several states' efforts to expand mail-in voting amid the pandemic.

"The thing I'm most worried about," said Obama, is "how do we protect the integrity of the election process? How do we make sure that people's votes are counted? How do we police and monitor how state officials are setting up polling places and ensuring that every vote is counted?" He said despite previous Republican efforts to alter voting processes, Trump's attacks on USPS are "unique to modern history."