LISTEN: Trump Lawyer Can’t Explain to Dan Abrams Why Mail-In Voting is Now Fine for Florida

Mediaite founder Dan Abrams had some pointed questions for Trump senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis on his SiriusXM program Wednesday, and Ellis struggled to explain the president’s conflicting positions on voter fraud and mail-in ballots in Florida.

President Donald Trump has spent weeks attacking mail-in ballots as presenting a major risk for voter fraud and undermining the integrity of the November election — attacks that have no evidence to back them up. Adding to the weirdness of this as a competitive election strategy, multiple political observers have opined that this tactic is likely to backfire, potentially depressing turnout among Trump’s own supporters. In late June, Florida Democrats were already boasting of a substantial lead over the state Republicans in vote-by-mail enrollment.

Recently, however, Trump did a quick 180-degree turn and suddenly declared that mail-in ballots were perfectly fine in Florida. The campaign has tried various ways to spin this, to no avail. Campaign senior adviser Mercedes Schlapp had a memorable day on cable news Tuesday, getting shredded by not one, but two cable news hosts on the issue.

Ellis didn’t fare much better than Schlapp when Abrams interviewed her.

“I guess I’m trying to figure out what Florida has done between 2018 and now,” said Abrams to the campaign’s lawyer, “that the president went from believing that there was voter fraud in Florida, to now believing that the system is ‘safe’ and ‘tried and true.'”

Ellis objected, saying that Abrams was interpreting Trump’s words as representing “that there is 100% perfection in Florida.”

Ellis continued, saying that Trump was talking about “a contrast,” between “the Florida system that has taken measures to make sure, to hopefully make sure, that they’re reducing the opportunity for fraud,” states like Nevada, which she claimed were “pushing it through” and “intentionally removing safeguards.”

Abrams read from Trump’s tweets, directly quoting his words calling Florida’s system “safe and secure, tried and true,” and other comments from the president, and again pressed Ellis for an answer.

“What happened between 2018, when he was saying that he was convinced there was voter fraud in mail-in ballots, and 2020, in the state of Florida, to suddenly give him that reassurance?”

Ellis again tried to talk about the “contrast” between Florida and other states, but Abrams cut her off, and asked her to just answer the question regarding Florida.

“I think that you’re reading that into the context of his statement,” said Ellis, saying that was an incorrect interpretation and “you can’t just isolate Florida,” again trying to bring up Nevada.

Abrams dismissed this explanation, scoffing at “the idea that the president was thinking about Nevada when he was writing about Florida.”

What happened to conservatives “reading the words [for] what they mean, right?” asked Abrams. “Let’s look to the actual words. The words he used were about Florida being tried and true. The words he used in 2018 in Florida were about mail-in voter fraud, and nothing has really changed in the state of Florida. And that’s the problem.”

“And again, if you refuse to put that in context of the greater scope of  what’s happening in the United States,” said Ellis (again), “Florida is a better system than Nevada, it’s a better system currently than what’s going on in New York, what’s happening in Pennsylvania, what’s happening in L.A. County. Florida is currently better and you’ll see what happens in November.”

Later in the interview, the topic returned to Nevada.

Calling the chance of victory in a lawsuit the campaign filed to stop a recently enacted law that would expand mail-in voting in Nevada “very unlikely,” Abrams asked Ellis about the case. “You’ve gotta know that, that this is not an easy lawsuit.”

“I really appreciate you bringing me on to discuss that,” said Ellis. “I think that you should thank the campaign instead, and say ‘thank you for standing up to these systems that are ripe for fraud, and making sure to protect and preserve free elections.”

Abrams said that he had read every page of the lawsuit. Ellis encouraged him to have as guests the Democratic governor or state legislators who supported the new law, “so they could defend the bill…so we could all know what the heck they were thinking.”

Abrams acknowledged there might be theoretical grounds to challenge the law, but that after reading the bill himself, felt that the legislative intent was fairly clear.

Listen above, via SiriusXM.