Hypocrisy alert: Trump, mortal foe of mail voting, again votes by mail

He’s trying to restrict mail voting by executive order, attempting to ram legislation through Congress to ban it, and has even said — yikes! — that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin agrees with him that vote-by-mail is fraudulent.

But when it came time to cast his ballot in Florida’s Republican primary this month, President Donald Trump was more than happy to avail himself of a mail-in ballot.

Trump requested an absentee ballot last month and returned it on Aug. 13, Politico reported, citing Palm Beach County voting records.

The White House defended the president’s decision to vote by mail, saying that the anti-voting legislation he backs “has ​commonsense exceptions for Americans to use mail-in ⁠ballots for illness, disability, military, or travel – but ​universal mail-in voting should not be allowed because ​it’s highly susceptible to fraud.”

It wasn’t the first time Trump had demonstrated a “do as I say, not as I do” attitude towards voting.

In March, the president also voted by mail in Florida’s special election. Confronted with this hypocrisy, he fell back on a convenient excuse: “I’m president of the United States.”

“I did a mail-in ballot for elections that took place in Florida because I felt like I should be here instead of being in the beautiful sun,” he said.

When a journalist pointed out that Trump had been in Florida multiple times in the run-up to that race and could have voted early in person, Trump falsely claimed state law had exceptions for people away on business trips.

In fact, Florida allows any voter to request a mail ballot without providing a reason, the exact practice that Trump — and, apparently, Putin — opposes.

Trump has repeatedly said that he views mail voting as inherently fraudulent. Restricting the practice — which nearly a third of Americans use to cast their ballots — is a core component of the president’s plan to undermine the 2026 midterm elections and spare Republicans a drubbing at the polls.

In March, Trump issued an executive order that directed the U.S. Postal Service not to deliver mail ballots to or from voters unless their states provide lists of eligible voters who requested ballots. In effect, the executive order would create a nationwide database for absentee voters.

Earlier this month, a U.S. district court judge blocked the order’s implementation nationwide. The Trump administration is now begging the U.S. Supreme Court to quickly take up the case and let it impose the restrictions on mail voting.

The Court’s conservative majority will now likely decide whether the order’s draconian restrictions can be implemented before November’s midterms.

Trump has also aggressively backed the SAVE America Act, which he previously described as his “No. 1 priority.” The extremely anti-voting legislation has repeatedly stalled in the Senate and has no realistic chance of passing before the midterms.

If enacted, SAVE would require proof of citizenship to register to vote, impose restrictive photo ID requirements to cast a ballot, and eliminate mail-in voting with limited exceptions.

Trump is so opposed to mail voting that he even claimed — approvingly — that Putin told him during their August 2025 summit in Alaska: “Your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting… It’s impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections.”