What with the conspiracy theories about how President Trump is allegedly using the USPS to steal the election reaching peak stupid on social media, in newsrooms, and in the murky fever swamps of MSNBC and CNN, one Oregon Democrat hatched a plan Tuesday to out-virtue signal all other Democrats about how he was willing to take drastic measures in order to protect the postal service.
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) posted a video to his Twitter account yesterday of him chaining himself to a USPS drop box in Oregon, declaring “they’re not gettin’ this one”:
He’s posted a number of videos over the last several days alleging, without evidence, the conspiracy theory about Trump and the postal service. He also managed to allege Trump was also responsible for supposed delays in mail-order prescription drugs reaching senior citizens and military veterans because why not?
DeFazio appears to have been fueled by ridiculous suggestions floated by former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice and presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden that Trump supporters in red MAGA hats were whisking away mail drop boxes in broad daylight in Oregon.
The USPS has confirmed some postal service drop boxes in Portland and Eugene have recently been removed (not by MAGA hat wearers) but says it was for legitimate reasons:
Residents of Portland and Eugene were alarmed this week to see some U.S. Postal Service mailboxes removed from neighborhood streets and hauled away in flatbed trucks.[…]But a Postal Service spokesperson said declining mail volume means the Postal Service is removing “duplicate” boxes from areas that have multiple collection boxes. The USPS confirmed that four mailboxes were removed in Portland this week.“First-class mail volume has declined significantly in the U.S., especially since the pandemic,” Ernie Swanson, a spokesman for the USPS, told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “That translates to less mail in collection boxes.”[…]Another Postal Service spokesperson, David Rupert, said some of the mailboxes were also removed and replaced with higher-security boxes.
The scaremongering by Democrats on postal service boxes has gotten so out of control that even the Democrat-friendly “fact-checkers” at Snopes stepped in to try and clear up some of the confusion:
We don’t have statistics about how COVID-19 has impacted the volume of mail. However, a fact sheet from the Postal Service does show that the volume of mail has decreased over the last decade. In 2009, 77.6 billion pieces of first class mail were sent through post office. In 2019, that number sat just below 55 billion. Conversely, the number of delivery points has increased by about 9 million over the last decade.It should also be noted that removing collection boxes has been a cost saving measure used by Postal Service for years. In 2011, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that number of collection boxes had declined by 60% between 1985 and 2011.
The Snopes fact check and the reports that predate Trump’s administration on drop box removal should put these Democratic conspiracy theories to rest, but unfortunately, they won’t.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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