Speaker Mike Johnson tried to explain away Donald Trump’s vote-by-mail despite the president’s attempts to upend the system of remote voting.
Palm Beach County records show that Trump, 79, voted by mail in Tuesday’s special election in Florida, as did First Lady Melania Trump, despite the president as recently as Monday calling it “mail-in-cheating.”
“Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating,” Trump declared.
At his press conference on Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked to square the president’s attacks on the mail-in option while using it himself.
“Look, I think some states have handled mail-in balloting well,” Johnson said. “Florida is a good example of that.”
According to Johnson, “They don’t allow fraud. They have great systems.”
The speaker did not go into what makes Florida’s systems better than other states, but he claimed that was not true for other parts of the country, and specifically called out the largest blue state.
“That is the concern, especially in a state like California,” Johnson declared. “States where they just send mail-in ballots to everyone for no reason whatsoever.”
“It is common sense. It is an obvious thing that if you’re mailing ballots out, inherently it opens the door, at least the possibility of fraud,” Johnson argued.
Notably, the speaker attacked California, but it’s one of eight states and Washington, D.C. that conduct elections by mail, including two states Trump won in 2024: Nevada and Utah.
While the president and Johnson rail against vote-by-mail, multiple government and independent analyses have found voter fraud, including by mail, is rare. Florida, however, is a major hub for fraud, including identity theft and investment scams.
The president also voted by mail in 2020, and more than three million Floridians voted by mail in 2024.
“It’s much easier to control that election integrity if you’re making people come in in person, show a photo ID, and prove who they are,” Johnson said. “It’s an obvious thing.”
“That’s what the president’s talking about. That’s what we have talked about at long length,” the speaker continued.
Johnson said that some states “do it a lot better than others” and it does not mean it’s “not a problem elsewhere in the country.”
Trump was in Palm Beach over the weekend, and early in-person voting ran through Sunday, so the president could have practiced what he himself has preached and shown up in person to cast a ballot.
Despite Trump and Republicans’ pushing to restrict vote-by-mail, Pew polling last year found that a majority of Americans support expanded access to vote-by-mail.
58 percent supported allowing any voter to cast their ballot by mail if they wanted to, while just 42 percent did not.
