'I've been screaming': GOP strategist fumes as Trump continues to attack mail-in voting

Republican Party officials seem to realize that they have put themselves at a major disadvantage when it comes to voting by mail and they've been sending signals that they will do more to encourage mail-in voting in this election cycle.

However, the Washington Post reports that they could have a tough time pulling this off because their presumptive nominee, former President Donald Trump, keeps attacking the practice as vulnerable to fraud despite the fact that there is no evidence to back up this assertion.

"Any time the mail is involved, you’re going to have cheating," Trump said earlier this month. "It’s too bad people don’t say it. They don’t want to say it.”

The month before, Trump declared that "mail-in voting is totally corrupt" and told Fox News' Laura Ingraham that "if you have mail-in balloting, you automatically have fraud."

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These statements have proven frustrating to GOP operatives who believe Trump shot himself -- and their party -- in the foot in past years by discouraging mail-in voting.

GOP strategist Cody Hall, for instance, says that "it’s totally possible" that Trump's disdain for mail-in voting "cost him the last election."

But Hall says that even if Trump stopped attacking the practice, the party needed to devote more resources to educating their voters.

“The messaging is one thing, but the resources are just as, if not more, important,” he said. “You have to actually do it. I’ve been screaming it from the mountaintop. You’ve got to have the money to execute this.”

One Trump adviser told the Post that the former president fears that Post Office workers secretly tamper with ballots to help Democrats.

"He’s suspicious of the postal workers, of anyone who could touch the ballot," the adviser explained, without citing any evidence of a mass mailman conspiracy to hurt the political prospects of the one-time "Celebrity Apprentice" host.