Editor’s Note: Michael D’Antonio is the author of the book “Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success” and co-author with Peter Eisner of “The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence.” The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
“Florida Man” has become a well-known Internet meme in recent years after Twitter users highlighted the bizarre news stories that seem to emerge frequently from the Sunshine State. Recent headlines include: “Florida man jumps onto hood of truck, holds on for 9 miles,” “Florida man kills Burger King employee after order takes too long” and “Florida man tries to buy Rolex watches with check printed from home computer.”
This week’s meme-worthy headline should read: “Florida man who attacked mail-in voting endorses it in state with notoriously problematic election system.” This latest installment comes, of course, from President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly pushed unsubstantiated claims that mail-in voting leads to widespread fraud.
He issued an odd reversal on Tuesday, however, aimed solely at Florida. “Whether you call it Vote By Mail or Absentee Voting, in Florida the election system is Safe and Secure, Tried and True….in Florida I encourage all to request a Ballot & Vote by Mail! #MAGA,” he tweeted.
When a White House reporter pressed Trump about his tweet during a press briefing later that day, he said, “Florida has got a great Republican governor … And over a long period of time, they’ve been able to get the absentee ballots done extremely professionally. Florida is different from other states.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is hardly a paragon of good governance. Indeed, by hewing to the President’s dismissive attitude toward the pandemic, DeSantis has failed to contain the virus in Florida, where more than 500,000 people have been infected and over 7,700 have died.
Besides, elections in Florida are not run by the governor, although he does appoint the secretary of state who oversees them. The state is also notorious for its election fiascos – remember the hanging chads and Brooks Brothers Riot after the 2000 presidential election led to a highly contentious recount?
Florida’s election system has been mired in controversy several times during the two decades since the Bush-Gore matchup. For example, a judge ruled that former Gov. Rick Scott’s administration violated federal law by purging voter rolls too close to the 2012 presidential election. In 2016, Russian hackers broke into the voter registration files of two Florida counties, though DeSantis said it did not impact vote tallying.
So why would Trump tout the state as a model of election security? The answer lies in Trump’s own words: Florida is led by a “Republican governor.” The President, who has made no secret of his partisanship, often praises Republicans like DeSantis while denouncing Democratic governors such as Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Jay Inslee of Washington.
Thanks to its large population, Florida is a swing state that offers presidential candidates a rich Electoral College prize. One problem for the President, in Florida and elsewhere, is the likelihood that many of his supporters would find it easier and safer to vote by mail. Having repeatedly bashed mail-in voting, Trump, it appears, recently realized he needs a good showing in the Sunshine State and now wants it both ways. Thus, Florida Man says voting by mail is bad, but also good.
Trump is not a novice when it comes to dangerous attempts to de-legitimize election results. In the run-up to 2016, he frequently claimed the election was “rigged,” without providing any evidence. Then, when it became evident that Russia attempted to interfere in the election on his behalf, Trump denied what had happened.
By claiming the election would be rigged, but only in a way that would hurt his own prospects, Trump created an excuse to save face and set up a potential legal challenge in the event that he lost. It may have also energized his supporters, even as it damaged public confidence in the system that undergirds our democracy. What’s a little injury to the public trust in free and fair elections if it meant Trump would benefit at the nation’s expense?
(An earlier variation of a Trumpian assault on our election system involved his insistence on the patently false charge that former President Barack Obama was foreign-born and thus illegitimately elected. He persisted in this racist “Birtherism” for years.)
Trump is back at it again in 2020, and his attack on mail-in voting – except in Florida – is so twisted that it makes me wonder if he had help devising it.
Trump’s longtime political consultant Roger Stone, who was spared prison time after Trump commuted his 40-month sentence for lying to Congress and threatening a witness, has long warned against voter fraud. He went so far as to try to conduct crowd-funded exit polls in nine Democrat-leaning cities on election day in 2016 – a move that sparked fears of voter intimidation. In July, Stone told Axios Trump faced a “very tough fight” this election cycle, citing without evidence that voter fraud would be a major obstacle.
A self-described “dirty trickster,” Stone is a bit of a savant when it comes to craven politics. He claims to have organized the 2000 Brooks Brothers Riot, when scores of khaki-clad men stormed the office of the Miami-Dade supervisor of elections and played a pivotal role in ending the recount there.
Though Stone was born in Connecticut, he lives in Fort Lauderdale, which makes him, fittingly, a Florida Man too.