Trump Says Senate Recess Automatically Registers Noncitizens

President Donald Trump warned Monday that allowing senators to begin their scheduled August recess would automatically grant “free, deluxe, all-inclusive voting rights” to every noncitizen standing within 500 feet of a motor vehicle office. Trump demanded that Senate Majority Leader John Thune keep the chamber in Washington until it passes the SAVE Act, which would require documentary proof of citizenship for federal voter registration, or abolish the legislative filibuster so Republicans can approve the measure without the inconvenience of persuading enough senators.

Thune noted that the bill lacks the 60 votes needed to advance and asked supporters to identify a workable route to passage, reviving the reckless procedural fetish known in Washington as counting. “John Thune has to understand that every day a senator spends at home, probably grilling something, twelve million illegal ballots are being printed in a basement somewhere,” Trump said. “They are beautiful ballots, very professional, and many of them vote six or seven times for people nobody likes.” Election officials have repeatedly found no evidence of widespread noncitizen voting, a technical objection the White House dismissed as exactly what widespread noncitizen voting would want them to say.

Sen. Mike Lee supported canceling recess until the legislation receives a vote, effectively offering to keep all 100 senators in the Capitol until arithmetic becomes more cooperative. Thune has resisted both abandoning the break without a legislative strategy and demolishing the filibuster, prompting concern among Trump allies that he may secretly believe Senate rules continue to exist after the president posts about them in capital letters. Republican strategists said the majority leader could resolve the dispute by scheduling repeated votes until the opposition becomes exhausted, citizenship documents materialize in every wallet or C-SPAN runs out of electricity.

White House officials emphasized that recess remains the nation’s largest election vulnerability because lawmakers outside Washington cannot protect democracy by appearing on cable television and demanding that somebody else protect democracy. Under the administration’s analysis, each unattended committee room becomes a polling place, every closed cafeteria issues absentee ballots and every senator photographed near a barbecue personally adds 40,000 undocumented voters to the rolls. The United States therefore has secure elections only when the Senate is trapped indoors.

* None of the quotes in this article were spoken by an actual person. More info.