President Donald Trump was challenged on Wednesday to substantiate his claims about massive mail-in election fraud benefiting Democrats. The only thing he could come up with was a “pants on fire” falsehood.

The idea of more states moving toward a mail-in system ahead of November’s election is gaining steam amid the coronavirus pandemic. The dilemma Wisconsin voters faced on Tuesday between staying safe at home or heading to polling places to vote is one most states are interested in helping their citizens avoid. Trump, however, has other, more self-interested concerns.

Not only is the president leading Republican efforts to prevent federal funds from being used for mail-in efforts, but the briefing on Wednesday revealed he really doesn’t have any good reasons for his position.

Trump was pressed on the point during the White House coronavirus task force briefing by CNN’s Jim Acosta. Acosta referenced claims the president made the day before about why he thinks mail-in voting is bad — “You get thousands and thousands of people sitting in somebody’s living room, signing ballots all over the place,” Trump said — and asked him to back it up.

Acosta mentioned that five states (Utah, Colorado, Hawaii, Washington, and Oregon) already conduct all elections almost entirely by mail, and added, “You’ve been talking about voter fraud since the beginning of this administration. Where is the evidence?”

Suffice it to say, no evidence was forthcoming. Here’s a transcript of the first part of Trump’s response (emphasis mine):

I think there is a lot of evidence, but we’ll provide you with some. There’s evidence that’s being compiled just like it’s being compiled in the state of California, where they settled with Judicial Watch saying that a million people should not have been voting. You saw that? I am telling you, in California, in the great state of California, they settled and we could’ve gone a lot further. Judicial Watch settled where they agreed that a million people should not have voted, where they were 115 years old and lots of things and people were voting in their place.

Pressed by @Acosta to provide evidence of electoral fraud, Trump promises to get back to him and then cites a Judicial Watch story that PolitiFact rated "pants on fire" https://t.co/0LYJBTwU5S pic.twitter.com/zDQe0pSwK2 — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 8, 2020

Judicial Watch is a right-wing nonprofit led by staunch Trump loyalist Tom Fitton. The settlement Trump referred to is a January 2019 agreement between the organization and Los Angeles County that required the county to remove inactive registrations from the voter rolls. By definition, these people hadn’t voted — that’s why their registrations were inactive. Yet Trump has somehow spun this into an unfounded claim about a million people casting illegal ballots.

The briefing on Wednesday was not the first time Trump made this claim. He said the same thing last summer during an interview on Meet the Press. At that time, PolitiFact fact-checked Trump’s claim and rated it a “pants on fire” lie.

The PolitiFact piece quotes California Secretary of State Alex Padilla (D) as saying, “[n]o matter how much he repeats them, Trump’s lies about voter fraud are patently untrue. Specifically, the settlement with Judicial Watch, Los Angeles County, and the Secretary of State contains absolutely no admission to or evidence of ‘illegal votes.’”

The rest of Trump’s answer wasn’t any better

After citing a “pants on fire” lie, Trump referred to the aforementioned five states that already have robust mail-in voting systems and said, “every one of those states you have mentioned is a state that happens to be won by the Democrats.” That’s also not true. Utah, for instance, is a deep-red state.

Trump concluded by simply restating the unfounded allegations that Acosta asked him to substantiate, saying of mail-in voting, “thousands of votes are gathered. And they come in and they’re dumped in a location then all of the sudden you lose an election that you think you’re going to win. I won’t stand for it.” Ironically, the only instance of large-scale mail-in election fraud possibly swaying an election in recent history is a Republican scheme in North Carolina in 2018. Other states with mail-in systems, such as Oregon, have safeguards preventing that sort of fraud from happening.

After Wednesday’s briefing, Trump took to Twitter to try and make a distinction between absentee voting — which he apparently is fine with (he even voted absentee in Florida’s recent election) — and mail-in voting.

“Absentee Ballots are a great way to vote for the many senior citizens, military, and others who can’t get to the polls on Election Day. These ballots are very different from 100% Mail-In Voting, which is “RIPE for FRAUD,” and shouldn’t be allowed!” he wrote.

Absentee Ballots are a great way to vote for the many senior citizens, military, and others who can’t get to the polls on Election Day. These ballots are very different from 100% Mail-In Voting, which is “RIPE for FRAUD,” and shouldn’t be allowed! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2020

But this distinction doesn’t make sense. There’s no reason to think mail-in voting for in-state residents is any more susceptible to fraud than absentee voting for residents who are traveling or temporarily living elsewhere.

None of Trump’s claims about election fraud make sense — but he keeps making them anyway

The backdrop to all this is the coronavirus pandemic, which threatens to make it unsafe for people to go to the polls in November and has made mail-in voting an increasingly attractive option.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Thursday morning found that significant majorities of both Democrats (79 percent) and Republicans (65 percent) support a requiring for mail-in voting for November’s election, with 72 percent of US adults supporting it overall.

Trump, however, is convinced mail-in voting hurts Republicans in general and him in particular. He even came perilously close to admitting this in a tweet he posted on Wednesday in which he claimed the system “for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans.”

Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to state wide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it. Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans. @foxandfriends — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2020

In fact, Republicans in mail-in states like Utah and Colorado have had a lot of success. But it’s been GOP orthodoxy for decades that anything driving up voter turnout is bad for the party. That belief is a big reason why Trump has been pushing bogus claims of election fraud for years and using them to argue on behalf of a voter ID system that would make it harder for poor people to vote.

In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016

The exchange with Acosta illustrated how flimsy these claims are while at the same time showing that even amid a deadly pandemic, Trump prioritizes his perceived political self-interest — even if it means that some people end up abstaining from voting for fear of getting sick.

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