Trump Called Mail-In Voting "Cheating" — Then Voted by Mail
The timing on this one is hard to ignore.
On Monday, March 23, President Trump stood at a Memphis roundtable and declared "mail-in voting means mail-in cheating"—calling for an end to the practice and saying something needs to be done about it. The very same day, Palm Beach County records were showing that Trump had already cast a mail-in ballot earlier this month in Florida's special election for House District 87, which covers the area around Mar-a-Lago.
Public records indicate the ballot had been received and counted by Palm Beach County election officials. Trump was in Palm Beach over the weekend, with early voting running through Sunday, March 22.
This isn't the first time he's done this either. Trump has voted by mail before while simultaneously railing against the practice publicly.
What the White House Said
The White House didn't exactly deny it. Spokesperson Olivia Wales pointed to the SAVE America Act—legislation Trump has been pushing hard that would require proof of citizenship to register and ban universal mail-in voting, with narrow exceptions for illness, disability, military service, and travel.
"As everyone knows, the President is a resident of Palm Beach and participates in Florida elections, but he obviously primarily lives at the White House in Washington, D.C.," Wales said. "This is a non-story."
The argument being made is essentially that Trump's situation—splitting time between Florida and Washington—qualifies under the travel exception his own proposed legislation would allow. Whether that reasoning lands is going to depend a lot on who you ask.
The Bigger Picture
Trump has spent years hammering mail-in voting as a gateway to fraud, blaming his 2020 loss to Joe Biden on it, and demanding investigations. He's pushed hard for legislation that would eliminate the option for most Americans. He's called for it to go to the front of the legislative line, threatening to withhold his signature from other bills until it passes.
And he keeps voting by mail himself.
The White House says it's a non-story. For roughly 48 million Americans who voted by mail in the last presidential election—using the same method Trump used this month—it probably feels like more than that.
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