Donald Trump’s Post Office gambit has completely collapsed today

| 6:00 pm EDT August 18, 2020
Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.

Over the past three days Palmer Report has been documenting how Donald Trump was losing the upper hand in the Post Office battle, with even his own House and Senate allies publicly admitting that he was going to have to cave. When Trump’s Postmaster General Louis DeJoy agreed to testify to the House instead of trying to drag out a subpoena battle, we said it was all over, because DeJoy would start trying to clean up his act before his testimony.

Sure enough, DeJoy announced today that he’s immediately suspending all the changes he’d been making the Post Office. No more removal of mailboxes. No more removal of sorting machines, and so on. This means we’ve officially won – and not just because he’s caving on these things, but because he’s now showing the vulnerability that will allow us to keep pressuring him until he caves on reinstating the functionality he’s removed.

Now that we’ve won the battle, it’s crucial that we do two things. The first is that we have to keep heaping pressure on the crumbling Louis DeJoy to make sure he keeps caving, and that he’s too afraid to try any new secret sabotage. Hopefully we can push him into resigning, which could allow career Post Office officials to retake control on an acting basis through the election.

The second key is that we’ve got to stop talking as if we’ve lost this battle. Trump didn’t “kill” the Post Office. Mail-in voting hasn’t become “unsafe.” Trump hasn’t magically “rigged” the election through the Post Office. When we promote this kind of fatalist narrative, we risk leaving voters with the impression that they shouldn’t even bother voting. As Michelle Obama reminded us last night, Trump is corrupt and evil, but he’s also an incompetent failure. Now let’s go win this.

Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.