Trump Claims ‘Voting Is an Honor’ After Railing Against Mail-In Ballots

President Donald Trump spent time on Wednesday attacking mail-in ballot applications, though he made mistakes while doing so, and later seemed to suggest that voting wasn’t a right but rather a privilege that had to be safely guarded against fraud.

Trump threatened to cut federal funding for the states of Michigan and Nevada for what he claimed was sending absentee ballots to people in the mail without even checking for ID. As it turned out, these states were merely sending applications.

“Michigan sends absentee ballots to 7.7 million people ahead of Primaries and the General Election,” Trump’s original tweet said.

However, when he was corrected by a large number of journalists and Democrats, including Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, he issued another tweet but still attacked the process of sending vote by mail applications.

“This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this Voter Fraud path!” he said in both versions of the tweet.

By Wednesday evening, Trump had rowed back on the threat to cut funding but his rhetoric about voting was unchanged.

“Voting is an honor. It shouldn’t be something where they send you a pile of stuff and you send it back,” he said.