Trump and US Postal Service

Soon after taking office in 2017, President Donald Trump seized on the US Postal Service as an emblem of the bloated bureaucracy. "A loser," he repeatedly labelled one of America's most beloved public institutions, according to aides who discussed the matter with him.

Allies coddled Trump by telling him the reason he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016 was widespread mail-in balloting fraud - a conspiracy theory for which there is no evidence - and the President's postal outrage coarsened further.

Advisers would tell Donald Trump that the reason Hillary Clinton won the overall vote in the 2016 US election was because of the US Postal Service. 

Advisers would tell Donald Trump that the reason Hillary Clinton won the overall vote in the 2016 US election was because of the US Postal Service. 

Then Trump complained to senior White House advisers that Jeff Bezos - a presidential foe in part because he owns The Washington Post, whose news coverage the President thought was unfair and too tough on him - was "getting rich" because Amazon had been "ripping off" the Postal Service with a "sweetheart deal" to ship millions of its packages. They explained that this was untrue and that the Postal Service actually benefited from Amazon's business. But the President railed for months about what he described as a "scam".

And now Trump has fixated again on the Postal Service, this time trying to make it a tool in his election campaign by slowing mail service, blocking an emergency infusion of federal funds and challenging the integrity of mail-in balloting. The President acknowledged last week that his opposition was rooted in his desire to restrict how many Americans can vote by mail.

The moves by the Trump administration to disrupt a constitutionally mandated government service during the coronavirus pandemic - under the argument that it will boost operational efficiencies - represent the culmination of Trump's grievance-fuelled crusade against the Postal Service that dates to the start of his presidency. Many of his complaints have centred on the post office's chronic financial problems.