NBC guest says Trump's claim that mail-in voting will result in a rigged election is “really visceral and sincere”
Savannah Guthrie: Trump “said the only way we can lose this election is if it is a rigged election. That's a quote”
Published
Citation From the August 25, 2020, edition of NBC's Republican National Convention Special Coverage
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE (CO-HOST): People are not as anxious to vote in person as they may have before. Let me go to Rich Lowry on this, because Rich you know, the president has been talking about this almost nonstop, this his fear that mail-in voting is going to lead to fraud. He said the only way we can lose this election is if it is a rigged election. That's a quote. Do you think that is a winning message for him?
RICH LOWRY (EDITOR, NATIONAL REVIEW): No, but I think it's really visceral and sincere, but a little bit of a head-scratcher. Prior to this point, there wasn't been a clear partisan advantage one way or the other to mail-in voting. There might be now, in part because of different attitudes between Republicans and Democrats about the risk of the pandemic and also because of the President's own rhetoric, which is gonna give mail-in voting a bad name for some Republicans. I do think there are scenarios. I wouldn't expect widespread fraud. But there are scenarios where you could have a train wreck in part because of mail-in voting. One is if someone, would likely be the President, is leading on election night because of the in-person voting and then you have the mail-in voting slowly being counted and slowly who's ahead changes. That would be a very ugly process.