Obama thrashes Trump's attempts to 'starve' and 'kneecap' the Post Office ahead of 2020 vote

Former President Barack Obama on Friday had some harsh words for the way President Donald Trump is handling the United States Postal Service ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

CNN reports that Obama told former campaign manager David Plouffe during a podcast interview that he has been shocked to see reports about the USPS slowing down delivery ahead of the election, which is expected to see record use of mail-in voting.

"What we've seen in a way that is unique to modern political history is a President who is explicit in trying to discourage people from voting," he said. "What we've never seen before is a President say, 'I'm going to try to actively kneecap the postal service to discourage voting and I will be explicit about the reason I'm doing it.'"

Obama said that Republicans have already put up several barriers to voting, such as voter ID laws.

But he argued that Trump's efforts to impede the functionality of a Constitutionally mandated institution were on a whole new level.

"You now have the President throwing in this additional monkey wrench trying to starve the postal service," he said. "My question is what are Republicans doing where you are so scared of people voting that you are now willing to undermine what is part of the basic infrastructure of American life?"