Postal Service Issues Warning About Election; President Obama Praises Biden V.P. Selection; Postal Service Warns It May Not Meet Some Mail-In Ballot Deadlines as Trump Opposes New Funding, Attacks Mail-In Voting
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.</s>JIM ACOSTA, CNN HOST: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. Wolf Blitzer is off. I'm Jim Acosta in THE SITUATION ROOM. And we're following breaking news on the firestorm over mail-in voting ahead of the presidential election. The U.S. Postal Service is now warning states that it may not be able to deliver ballots in time for them to be counted. This comes after President Trump has been misleading Americans about the integrity of mail-in voting and refusing to support additional postal funding. Tonight, former President Barack Obama is weighing in, accusing Trump of trying to kneecap the Postal Service to suppress votes. This comes as worries about keeping voters safe in the midst of the pandemic are more urgent than ever. The U.S. coronavirus death toll just passed 168,000. And a new CDC forecast projects about 21,000 more deaths in the next three weeks. First, let's go to the White House. CNN White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins is there. Kaitlan, as we're seeing this new warning from the Postal Service, the president still refuses support funding that would assist mail-in voting.</s>KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, he has. And this week, Jim, he acknowledged that in order for there to be widespread voting by mail this November, which experts are saying they're very well could be because of the pandemic, the president knows that they do need more money for that. But now he says he's resisting it. And, today, he revealed why, that he sees it as what could amount to basically a bargaining chip with Democrats, as they have been negotiating on Capitol Hill to try to get another coronavirus legislation bill signed, though, so far, those talks have completely collapsed.</s>COLLINS (voice-over): Even though it could be critical to carrying out the November election, President Trump made clear today that his refusal to give the post office more funding is a direct shot at Democrats.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Because they want $1 trillion to go to their friends doing a bad job running certain cities and states that are doing very badly.</s>COLLINS: The president argued he wouldn't block new funding for the U.S. Postal Service if Democrats meet his demands in coronavirus legislation.</s>TRUMP: They're not giving it to me. They're giving it to the American people. I mean, giving it...</s>QUESTION: But if they were to agree with that.</s>TRUMP: Yes, I would -- I would certainly do that. Sure.</s>COLLINS: The effort to sow doubt about mail-in voting isn't just coming from the president. His top Cabinet officials are also issuing their own warnings.</s>WILLIAM BARR, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: The idea of conducting our elections by wholesale mail-in ballots is reckless and wrong.</s>COLLINS: President Barack Obama accused the Trump administration of attempting to suppress votes.</s>BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What we have 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.</s>COLLINS: Cost-cutting moves at the post office have come under scrutiny because it's causing delays in delivery and sparking concerns there will be widespread slowdowns. Trump recently claimed he hadn't spoken with the U.S. postmaster general, an ally of his and longtime GOP fund-raiser.</s>TRUMP: Well, I didn't speak to the postmaster general of the post office.</s>COLLINS: But the White House is now confirming Trump not only spoke with Louis DeJoy. He met with him last week ahead of the postmaster general's tense meeting with Democrats. Despite being the nation's most outspoken critic of voting by mail, Trump and first lady Melania Trump have requested their own mail-in ballots ahead of the election.</s>TRUMP: Absentee, good, universal mail-in, very bad.</s>COLLINS: The president also came under fire this week after he refused to knock down a racist conspiracy that Senator Kamala Harris may not be eligible to be vice president because her parents are immigrants, even though she was born in the</s>U.S. TRUMP: I heard it today that she doesn't meet the requirements.</s>COLLINS: Today, he was asked if he saw her addition to Joe Biden's ticket as a threat.</s>QUESTION: Do you have an issue with a strong woman of color being in this presidential race? Do you see...</s>TRUMP: None whatsoever.</s>QUESTION: You don't see her as a threat?</s>TRUMP: As you -- as you know, none whatsoever.</s>COLLINS: The answer from Trump the day before wasn't surprising, given he built his political career in part by sowing doubt about President Obama's birthplace. Today, Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, declined to denounce the move.</s>JARED KUSHNER, SENIOR PRESIDENTIAL ADVISER: I personally have no reason to believe she's not, but, again, my focus for the last 24 hours has been on the historic peace deal that we have been able to achieve here.</s>QUESTION: She was born in Oakland, California.</s>KUSHNER: Yes.</s>QUESTION: Makes her a qualified candidate. Why didn't the president take the opportunity to debunk that theory?</s>KUSHNER: I have not had a chance to discuss this with him. But, again, I will let his words speak for himself.</s>COLLINS: It wasn't the only conspiracy the White House didn't disavow this week. Trump recently congratulated and endorsed a Georgia Republican congressional candidate who has openly embraced the QAnon conspiracy, a movement the FBI has labeled a potential domestic terrorist threat. Today, he avoided a question about whether he agrees with Marjorie Taylor Greene.</s>TRUMP: She comes from a great state. And she had a tremendous victory. So, absolutely, I did congratulate her. Please. Go ahead.</s>QUESTION: But specifically -- specifically on QAnon...</s>TRUMP: Go ahead, please.</s>QUESTION: ... and her decision to embrace that conspiracy theory, do you agree with her on that? That was the question.</s>TRUMP: Go ahead, please.</s>COLLINS: And, Jim, the president just arrived in New Jersey at his golf club, where he's spending the weekend. But, before going there, he made a stop in Manhattan, because his younger brother, Robert, who is 72 is in the hospital. The president hasn't said why he's in the hospital. He did say he was ill. He said he was going to check on him. He was -- seemed like he was still learning more information about it. And, so far, that's really all we know, is that he is in a hospital in New York. No further details so far, Jim.</s>ACOSTA: All right. Kaitlan Collins, thank you very much for that. Let's get more on that new warning from the U.S. Postal Service about potential delays in delivering mail-in ballots. We're joined by CNN political correspondent Abby Phillip. Abby, what does this tell us about how fast voters' ballots can be delivered, compared to the expectations that everybody has?</s>ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, everyone should know that requesting their ballot, receiving their ballot and returning their ballot can take a lot more time than they're probably expecting. The U.S. Postal Service is now warning dozens of states, according to "The Washington Post," that these ballots could take longer in the mail system. And some of that is because of recent changes, cost- cutting changes that have been made that have resulted in election- related materials being slowed through the system. Now, these warnings aren't necessarily entirely new. There have been, over the years, piecemeal warnings like that given to states about their deadlines and making them realistic. But what is different about this is that it is so widespread. And we are now expecting millions and millions of ballots to go through the Postal Service system this year because of expanded mail-in voting in a lot of states. It's also coming at a time as there are now questions about the USPS and whether there is political influence being exerted over that organization, due to the fact that it's being headed up by Louis DeJoy, who is a top Republican donor, a top donor to President Trump and his allies, who has led that agency since May. Now, DeJoy has said that these measures are being put into place because of the need to make the Postal Service more efficient. But I have already spoken to postal workers who tell me that these changes are having a deleterious effect on the ability of the Postal Service to do this very essential function that it has.</s>ACOSTA: Indeed. All right, Abby, stay with us, as we bring in CNN legal and national security analyst Carrie Cordero. Carrie, the Postal Service is warning that some voters may not have their ballots counted in time because of delivery time delays. But those delays are the direct result of cost-cutting measures by the postmaster general. In an election year, the timing just seems suspicious.</s>CARRIE CORDERO, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, well, I think there's a few different things going on here, Jim. So, on one hand, there's the Postal Service, which clearly needs an infusion of money. And Congress needs to act on that front to be able to help it get through this new additional increase in volume that it's going to have to support the election and make sure that the fall election can go through efficiently and smoothly. So, there's a legislative battle that has to do with money and the ability of the post office to function in that way. Then I think a separate issue is the fact that the president himself is trying to undermine confidence in the election. And he's doing that by talking about mail-in ballots as if they are corrupt or they are fraudulent, when there is a history of them not being. And I think what he's also doing is, he's laying the groundwork for potential legal challenges. And that's where voters are really going to have to be patient, because the combination of the increased use of mail-in ballots, the stress on the post office, and then litigation that we may have to wait for right after the election may potentially all delay the actual outcome and result.</s>ACOSTA: And we have been reporting in the last couple of hours that the inspector general is going to be looking into some of this over at the Postal Service. Are you concerned that this inspector general will face some of the same problems that other I.G.s and the Trump administration have faced? They have been thrown out because the president didn't like what they were up to.</s>CORDERO: Yes, I am worried, to some extent, because this president has a very bad relationship with inspectors general. He doesn't want them to be able to do their independent job. They usually function in a very independent way. And so we will see whether he allows this particular inspector general. But he fired the director of national intelligence inspector general, and the State Department one has been released. Other -- throughout the government, other inspector generals have been removed from their positions. And so this is obviously an issue that is of the highest attention that the president has, which is a very difficult place for that inspector general to be.</s>ACOSTA: And, Abby, the postmaster general is a Trump ally and fund- raiser. When the president was asked, have you spoken with the postmaster general -- this was last Sunday -- he didn't tell -- he didn't tell the truth, either willingly or mistakenly. He had met with the postmaster general the week prior to that. Does this warning from the Postal Service actually play into President Trump's efforts to undermine voter confidence in this election?</s>PHILLIP: Well, that remains to be seen. It remains to be seen what the consequence of this warning will be. We have already seen in one state, in Pennsylvania, for example, where, just yesterday, there was a filing made by state election officials essentially saying that, because of these delays, they are going to try to accept ballots -- or they're looking for a court decision that allows them to accept ballots that are postmarked on Election Day. That's something that President Trump and his allies have actually been fighting against in the court. So, this could actually end up backfiring on the president. And, as you noted, it's prompted all these calls for an investigation that the inspector general is going to be looking at whether or not these delays that they're seeing are a result of the cost-cutting measures and what's been going on behind the scenes there. I do you think that, for Democrats -- I have already heard from many Democrats. They are urging their voters to use alternatives, to use ballot boxes to return their ballots, to go physically to polling places to return their ballots, instead of using the Postal Service, and they're upping those warnings to their voters, because they're concerned that these delays will continue or be exacerbated by the fall.</s>ACOSTA: And, Carrie, President Trump has now explicitly said he's holding up funding for the Postal Service to limit voting by mail. Do his actions amount to voter suppression, do you think?</s>CORDERO: Well, I think what he's trying to do is, like I said, is, he's trying to undermine confidence in the election. And he's trying to suppress the vote. I mean, he's trying to discourage people from having confidence that, if they vote in a certain way, mailing in their ballot, that their vote will matter. And so, by doing that, he is discouraging -- he is just de facto discouraging people to exercise their right to vote. Now, whether his judgment politically is correct that that will help him or hurt him, I think, is up for debate. Some political observers observe that that might actually hurt Republican voters who might mail in their ballot. But what's clear is that he is trying to undermine confidence...</s>ACOSTA: Could any of this amount to fraud, do you think, Carrie? Could any of this amount of fraud, do you think?</s>CORDERO: Well, I don't think -- he's not going to be charged with fraud. So fraud, as a criminal matter, I don't think he's going to be charged with. But I think what he's going to do is, he's going to use these allegations that he softening the ground for to then challenge the outcome of the vote, and he's going to be working behind the scenes to have those legal challenges ready to go.</s>ACOSTA: OK. Abby Phillip, Carrie Cordero, thank you very much for that perspective. Just ahead: The Trump team goes all out in its racist and sexist attacks on Kamala Harris, Jared Kushner joining his father-in-law in refusing to debunk a birther conspiracy theory that's a flat-out lie. Don Lemon, our Don Lemon, weighs in next.