DeJoy may be best known as the Trump-era GOP megadonor the left accused of meddling with mail-in voting to subvert the 2020 election.
Now that it’s all said and done, was the whole “Trump appointed Dejoy to destroy the USPS so mail in voting wouldn’t hinder him” just a massive conspiracy theory? The fact Dejoy is now seen as directly helping the Democrats and not as a partisan Trump toadie makes it seem like it was entirely overblown.
Now, I fully understand we can never understand Trump’s intentions, but the fact that there was almost no problems with mail-in voting in 2020 mean Dejoy actually was a legitimate appointment?
Can you cite a few examples? I can’t recall ever hearing about this conspiracy.
You’re probably thinking of this piece.
Talks about USPS problems. Talks about Trump hating USPS. One brief mention that it might affect mail-in voting. Does not suggest it is a deliberate tactic by Trump to rig the election.
I recall the talk being that the idea was to slow the mail down. This in itself wouldn’t rig an election, but it might help. A piece here, a piece there, could add up up to enough to affect the results.
Also as I recall, the mail actually was being slowed down.
Here’s an article from summer of 2020 talking about sorting machines being dismantled, and DeJo defending the decision - while also admitting that he needed to halt further dismantling to avoid the appearance of interfering with elections:
It appears that DeJoy (a confirmed Trump/GOP donor) functioned as a “useful idiot” for Trump, with the flavor of idiocy being “make the government run like a business” with a tone-deaf ignorance of the reason public services exist.
He did some things that had the documented effect of reducing capacity and delivery times:
Proceeding with a pre-existing plan to decommission some sorting machines.
Forcing delivery trucks to leave on time no matter what (even if the feeder trucks hadn’t arrived).
Various other short-sighted cost-cutting measures.
He also had holdings in companies that compete with the USPS, creating a conflict of interest.
Then there is the fact that Trump himself stated openly that he was opposing USPS funding bills with the intention of suppressing mail-in voting:
So we had Trump openly stating his intent to hobble the USPS. We had an interest-conflicted Trump donor ordering actions that had the effect of slowing down mail delivery. We will never know DeJoy’s actual intent here. But his real-life behavior and conflicts are indistinct from a lackey carrying out Trump’s documented preference to hobble the mail service to improve Trump’s election prospects.
Since then DeJoy has jumped onboard the bandwagon with all sorts of Democrat priorities. So at this point it doesn’t appear he’s in a mind to use his hard-to-fire position to serve as a ride-or-die Republican operative. It seems like he’s now aware of the public service aspect of the job, and that he needs to pay attention to public concerns if he wants his job to stay secure.
If you want my take, DeJoy is just another dumb bean-counting business guy who thinks government can or should be “run like a business”. He had no idea how it looked to be dismantling capacity in a pandemic election year. Trump exploited DeJoy’s naive, knee-jerk bias toward austerity. It worked for a while, and it was going to keep working until public outcry made DeJoy aware that he’d stepped in something smelly that could limit his own job security. Having been thus burned one time, he appears to have mended his ways somewhat.
The latter is weird. I mean whether or not wrecking the USPS really was his goal, you’d think he would have gone to great lengths to assure the public that he had no evil intent.
The evidence at the time pointed to DeJoy being more legitimate than not. Or rather, it was apparent even then that things like the sorting machines were just business as usual the predated his appointment and there was little evidence of any malicious intent on his part to interfere with the election.
But yes, despite this, some democrats believed it and demonized him. Maybe time has made him look better but I think anyone willing to dig even back then should have been fine with him.
The conspiracy theory I was aware of was that they were going to make the Post Office function so badly that the private sector could swoop in and rescue it, so you’d get mail delivered by FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc. Except:
