Donald Trump plans to vote early, despite spending years claiming without evidence that the process is suspect and fraudulent.
“Voting early, I guess would be good but people have different feelings about it, but the main thing is you’ve got to get out and you’ve got to vote, and I’ll be voting early,” the former president toldFox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade during a radio interview set to air on Wednesday.
Elsewhere, the Republican added he still feels “very mixed” about the practice.
That’s an understatement. Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump has both encouraged supporters to vote early and returned to the baseless criticisms about early voting that dominated the latter stages of his 2020 campaign.
For instance, during a Pennsylvania rally last month, Trump slammed early voting as “stupid” and urged his supporters to do it anyway.
“We’re here today because early voting begins in Pennsylvania over the next two weeks, and we need each and every one of you to go out,” he said. “Just don’t take anything for granted.”
That same day, he told Fox News, “Anytime you have mail-in voting, you’re going to have fraud and some people don’t like me saying it, but I say it.”
Republican officials and activists, have also seemingly changed their tone on early voting after 2020, encouraging the GOP faithful to get in on the action.
“The message from President Trump is very clear. It is great if you want to vote early,” RNC chair Michael Whatley said during a tour stop in Tampa, Florida, this summer, adding, “It is great if you want to vote by mail.”
The RNC, including co-chair Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, has been traveling the country on a “Protect the Vote” tour, which has included encouragements to vote early.
It’s a far cry from the 2020 election, where Donald Trump continued to claim early voting was compromising the election, declaring that widespread mail-in voting would cause “the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history.”
Trump also blocked emergency funding to the Post Office to deal with the rise in election-related mail, and painted a predictable shift in voting totals as Democratic-leaning mail-in ballots were counted in the swing state of Pennsylvania as evidence of some kind of fraud.
Trump himself voted by mail in primary elections in 2020, though he cast his presidential ballots in-person in 2016 and 2020.
