President Donald Trump believes that embattled Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes is a “disgrace” and should be fired.
The president spoke to The Daily Caller in an exclusive, wide-ranging interview Wednesday at the White House. The president did not mince words when asked about Snipes and the Florida recount.
Snipes has come under fire by media and elected Republicans for multiple irregularities in her vote reporting. After the Florida Senate race was called for Republican Gov. Rick Scott on election night, election supervisors in Broward and Palm Beach counties were still adding votes to their tally, in violation of Florida reporting law. In the subsequent days, Snipes defied a judge’s order to submit “over-voted” and “under-voted” absentee ballots for public review and admitted to “accidentally” mixing illegal ballots in with good ones. The illegal ballots “cannot be identified” now, according to Snipes.
TheDC asked the president specifically if he considers this behavior illegal and what Snipes’ future in her role as an election official should be.
“She’s a disaster,” Trump said.
He pointed to Snipes’ past alleged election illegality, which included destroying ballots and opening ballots illegally.
“You look at her past, she’s a disaster,” Trump said, “Even with me. I won Florida and — you remember? That area, Broward, didn’t come in,” Trump said of Broward County and Snipes. “You can only put in so many votes, although she may change that system.”
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“When they call this woman incompetent, they’re wrong,” Trump said of Snipes. “She’s very competent but in a bad way.”
When asked directly by TheDC if Snipes should be removed from office, Trump said, “Oh, she should have been removed — I think she should have been removed in the middle of this mix-up.”
Scott has considered removing Snipes.
Trump went on to say they should have called Florida during the evening of the election. “Well, many votes were added to that, and you know what’s going on. And now they have mixed them up. They mixed the votes up and now you can’t find the ones that were put in, they just put ’em in to a batch.”
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The president also renewed his call for national voter ID laws and decried illegal voting.
“The Republicans don’t win and that’s because of potentially illegal votes,” Trump complained. “When people get in line that have absolutely no right to vote and they go around in circles. Sometimes they go to their car, put on a different hat, put on a different shirt, come in and vote again. Nobody takes anything. It’s really a disgrace what’s going on.”
“If you buy a box of cereal — you have a voter ID,” Trump continued. “They try to shame everybody by calling them racist, or calling them something, anything they can think of, when you say you want voter ID. But voter ID is a very important thing.”
When asked about how to prevent a repeat situation in the 2020 presidential election, Trump bluntly said Snipes needed to go, along with her “cronies.”
“First thing you do is fire her and her cronies. You get ’em out,” Trump said, recalling his own election night in 2016. “Remember how long it took to get Florida? But I had, fortunately, enough votes, and they were sitting there waiting. They said, ‘Broward County is not reporting.’ This went on for hours.”
Trump continued, “The panhandle was so devastating to ‘Crooked Hillary’ — that thing came in, then all of a sudden Broward came in. And I won by, you know, I won by a lot of votes. I call it four Yankee stadiums.”
Election workers in Florida are attempting to meet a 3:00 p.m. deadline on Thursday to finish their statewide recount for the Senate and gubernatorial races.
TheDC’s Amber Athey also contributed to this report.