Kushner tries to clean up mess after suggesting Trump could delay election

Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser, said he is not ruling out the possibility that the November general election could be postponed due to the coronavirus.

“I’m not sure I can commit one way or the other, but right now that’s the plan,” Kushner said in an interview with Time published Tuesday night.

Kushner’s comments confirmed fears from Democrats that Trump may try to unilaterally move the election if he fears he may lose.

“Mark my words, I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow — come up with some rationale why it can’t be held,” Biden said at a fundraiser last month, according to the Washington Post.

Kushner’s comments raised so much uproar that he tried to clarify his remarks in a statement to NBC News.

“I have not been involved in, nor am I aware of, any discussions about trying to change the date of the presidential election,” Kushner told NBC.

Trump and his administration, according to the law, have no say in whether the election will be postponed.

Congress in 1845 passed a law to “establish a uniform time for holding elections for electors of President and Vice President in all the States of the Union.”

That law states, “That the electors of President and Vice President shall be appointed in each State on the Tuesday next after the first Monday in the month of November of the year in which they are to be appointed.”

In plain English, the presidential election will always be held on the first Tuesday of November — unless Congress votes to change that.

Democrats, for their part, have been pushing for states to increase their vote-by-mail capabilities in order to ensure all voters will be able to cast ballots in November should it be unsafe to vote in-person.

Democrats introduced the HEROES Act on Tuesday that includes $3.6 billion in funding for “contingency planning, preparation, and resilience of elections for Federal office,” according to a summary of the legislation.

Trump, as well as Republican lawmakers who support him, have condemned voting by mail, falsely saying it is rife with fraud.

Trump has also said he doesn’t like vote-by-mail because he believes it benefits Democrats over Republicans, even though data do not show that to be the case, according to a report from FiveThirtyEight.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.