While that joke of a Republican National Convention was going on Monday, with Nikki Haley giving her opening 2024 campaign speech, Sen. Tim Scott’s painful-to-hear assertion of what even Donald Trump supporters don’t believe or even want—praising Trump’s “efforts” at “racial healing”—and Kimberly Guilfoyle, who like Trump keeps forgetting that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, there was Part 2 of the grilling of Post Master General Louis DeJoy. As could be expected, Republicans didn’t ask any relevant questions, did not seem to care about the harm that the Republican donor-controlled Board of Governors pre-election actions were having on mail delivery, and in general behaved like any one of their cringe-inducing, bottom-feeding constituents. Save for those asking specific questions in regard to DeJoy’s fitness for his position and if he had any clue as to the operations of the Post Office, Democrats gave long-winded speeches which DeJoy reacted to by either smirking, claiming ignorance or in general providing simple-minded talking points that were essentially non-answers.
House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney pointed out that serious mail slowdowns did not start in April and May during the peak period of the COVID-19 pandemic, but did start in July, when the Republican-dominated Board issued its changes, which strangely enough coincided with Trump’s paranoid rhetoric about mail-in balloting reaching a fever pitch. Since then, stories like that coming out of California, such as “Like Armageddon, rotting food, dead animals and chaos at postal facilities, amid cutbacks” and tales of mail trucks forced to leave warehouses empty because of the lack of sorting machines and workers to process mail. Maloney suggested that DeJoy’s actions displayed “incompetence,” were “reckless” and likely “intentional.”
Her Republican counterpart, James Comer, praised DeJoy’s “reform” efforts despite the fact there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to them. He accused Democrats of “fabricating” a “baseless conspiracy theory” about the intent to disrupt mail-in balloting—conveniently ignoring the fact that Trump himself said that he wanted these “changes” for the express purpose of disrupting widespread mail-in voting. Comer admitted he didn’t know the whole “truth,” but expected to learn it from DeJoy’s testimony.
But as mentioned, there was almost no “there” in DeJoy’s testimony, just simplistic answers that did almost nothing to illuminate. He repeatedly expressed “confusion” about the questions, was “offended” by the “tone” of some of the implications, and denied any responsibility for actions the Board had taken literally days before he took his new position—as if he actually had no “clue” what was happening and didn’t approve of them beforehand. The only the time he took any responsibility at all was when he took “credit” for “suspending” actions until after the election—but after major damage had already been done.
It was absolutely ludicrous for DeJoy and the Republicans try to excuse the behavior of the USPS leadership—and Trump himself—by claiming they were doing legitimate “downsizing.” Maloney was justifiably angered when DeJoy refused to submit documents detailing and justifying the Board’s “plan” to “streamline” and “reform” the Post Office—plans that were clearly done “on the fly” and in accordance with Trump’s wishes to damage the Post Office’s ability to process mail-in ballots. Republicans on the committee (doesn’t it seem like Jim Jordan—who John Boehner called a “legislative terrorist”—is on every committee having public hearings?) seemed completely oblivious to the fact that acting like they just didn’t care about major slow-downs in mail and medicine deliveries actually looks not just political to most viewers, but intentional?
Rep. Gerry Connolly demanded to know “What leader would think that even the possibility of slowing down mail in a time such as this is a good idea? What leader would take steps to freeze over time for a workforce literally risking its life every day to deliver mail to the people of this nation? 40,000 postal workers have contracted COVID-19 or been quarantined because of it. 40,000. As the new PMG, Mr. DeJoy has recklessly cut hours and delayed delivery times in the pursuit of unsupported operational efficiencies.”
Instead of answering such questions, DeJoy deceived at every opportunity. “As part of this conversation there are many inaccuracies about my actions that I wish to again correct. First, I did not direct the removal of blue collection boxes or the removal of mail processing equipment. Second, I did not direct the cutback on hours at any of our post offices. And finally, I did not direct the elimination or any cutback in overtime. I did, however, suspend these practices, to remove any misperceptions about our commitment to delivering the nation’s election mail.”
In fact DeJoy did no such thing; He knew beforehand that the actions the Board took before he was “officially” in office would be devastating and he did nothing to either stop it or reverse it. In fact he continued to explicitly state that he had no intention of returning to service any of the 671 sorting machines removed—an incredulous 13 percent of the total at this critical time in the nation’s history.
Meanwhile, Robert “Mike” Duncan was incomprehensibly not asked about the rationalization for the Board of Governor’s actions in regard to removing post boxes and sorting machines, after laughing off his 2008 comments about vote-padding and election-stealing by Democrats. Responding instead to questions about how DeJoy came to be approved as Post Master General, he claimed that DeJoy would be a “transformational leader”—a fairly bizarre claim, since DeJoy was only there to rubberstamp the Board’s political actions to disable the Post Office. Duncan claimed that DeJoy’s alleged business “acumen” was needed to fix a “broken” business model; this is quite an odd assertion, since under questioning the only thing DeJoy seemed to know about the USPS’ operations was the price of a first-class stamp. It may be true that the Post Office needs “fresh thinking,” but there is no evidence to suggest the DeJoy is the man for the job—or that the current board is.
It is being reported that Rep. Maloney is threatening to subpoena DeJoy for access to that plan for a new “business model” concocted by the Board to discover just how much of it has anything to do with “modernization” or “streamlining” to make the Post Office more “efficient.” It seems more likely that the “plan” is a simple hatchet job to save Trump’s reelection chances. That is not a “conspiracy” theory—that is right out of that horse’s ass’ own mouth.
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