The nihilism of MAGA

Donald Trump is exactly the demographic most likely to vote by mail, and he remains so lazy that he can’t pretend otherwise even when lies about the security of mail voting have become one of his central themes:

President Trump, who has long railed against mail-in voting — including on Monday, when he called it “mail-in-cheating” — used the method himself in a Florida special election scheduled to take place on Tuesday.

According to voter records on the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections website, Mr. Trump voted by mail in Palm Beach County, home to his Mar-a-Lago Club. Records show he has been registered to vote there since 2019 — and that he mailed his ballot at least one other time, in 2020.

The website noted that Mr. Trump’s voter status was “by mail ballot” and that it had been counted in the special election that will determine whether Democrat Emily Gregory or Republican Jon Maples, whom Mr. Trump endorsed, will represent Mr. Trump’s district in the Florida state house.

Mr. Trump’s most recent vote, reported earlier by The Washington Post, comes as the president torpedoed negotiations to end the partial government shutdown to demand Republican lawmakers pass legislation called the SAVE Act that would stiffen voter identification requirements and make mail-in voting significantly more difficult.

I know pointing out Republican hypocrisy is like pointing out Republican breathing. But when there’s a better than even chance that the Supreme Court will restrict the practice with no legal basis whatsoever, after an oral argument in which multiple Republican justices spent time weaving baroque paranoid fantasies about mail voting that could have come from the leader himself, it’s really a lot to take.