Donald Trump first mentioned a postponement of the presidential election, Thursday, July 30, in a message published early in the morning on his Twitter account. Deploring in anticipation a generalization of postal voting due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which he considers without evidence that it promotes fraud, the President of the United States assured that “2020 will be the most INACCURATE and FRAUDULENT election in history. It will be a great embarrassment for the United States ”.
With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT E… https://t.co/VcSCg7IPwj
– realDonaldTrump (@Donald J. Trump)
“Postpone the election until people can safely and properly vote ??? “
The message instantly sparked an uproar in the Democratic ranks, where the mention of a postponement was explained by the bad figures, in terms of voting intentions, which the president is currently harvesting, just over three months of the November 3 election. No Republican has followed the President’s footsteps. Sign of the embarrassment created by this message, the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, yet a Harvard law graduate, refused to answer questions to Tim Kaine, Democratic Senator from Virginia, during a hearing in the Senate.
The necessary endorsement of the Congress
Donald Trump is advancing in this area on hazardous ground. According to the Constitution, only Congress has the power to postpone an election. In the event of a substantial postponement, it would also be necessary to modify the American Basic Law which fixes the date of the end of a presidential mandate on January 20 following the election. The extreme political polarization that the president has reinforced by his unconventional practice of politics makes an agreement between Democrats and Republicans on this point very unlikely. The arduous negotiations currently underway for a plan to support the American economy attest to this.
History does not argue in favor of the president. The United States, in fact, held their presidential election on the scheduled date during the civil war, in 1864, as after their entry into the second world war, in 1944. Donald Trump, finally, evokes a postponement so that his fellow citizens can vote without fear of Covid-19 while advocating for the general reopening of schools for the start of the school year.
On Tuesday, during a press briefing devoted to the epidemic, the president was also very optimistic about the situation in the country. “We are seeing improvements in major metropolitan areas and in most homes [de contamination]. Large parts of our country are cleared of [coronavirus] “, he assured.
This optimism contrasts with the increase in the number of deaths, which exceeded the threshold of 150,000 on Wednesday, and with the publication of growth figures for the second quarter which show a plunge of 32.9%, in a country entered into recession.
Death of former republican candidate Herman Cain from Covid-19
Herman Cain, former candidate for the Republican nomination for the White House, who became fervent support of Donald Trump, died at 74 years of complications related to Covid-19, announced, Thursday, July 30, his relatives on his Twitter account.
Sick, he was hospitalized in the Atlanta area just under two weeks after attending a campaign rally organized by US President Donald Trump in Oklahoma, Tulsa, on June 20. Businessman, television host, he co-chaired the Black Voices for Trump committee and defined himself as an “ABC”, the acronym for “black American conservative”. He had tried, without success, to obtain the nomination of the party in 2000, then in 2012.
