The president’s suggestion that the Nov. 3 vote could be delayed — something he cannot do on his own — drew unusually firm Republican resistance and signaled worry about his re-election bid.
Facing disastrous economic news and rising coronavirus deaths, President Trump on Thursday floated delaying the Nov. 3 election, a suggestion that lacks legal authority and could undermine confidence in an election that polls show him on course to lose.
Republican leaders in Congress, who often claim not to have seen Mr. Trump’s outlandish statements and tweets and who infrequently challenge him in public, promptly and vocally condemned any notion that the election would be moved.
It was a moment of striking political isolation for the president, as Republicans felt no need to defend him, Democrats condemned him, and three former presidents gathered in a rare moment together, paying tribute at the funeral of Representative John Lewis of Georgia.
Mr. Trump is facing about as dire a run-up to a presidential election as any incumbent could imagine: the worst quarter in the economy on record, an unceasing health crisis, protests nationwide and a country paralyzed by the lack of a financial recovery plan with no solution in sight — all compounded by his own inability to curtail his behavior.
His remarks on Twitter about the election delay — which he linked to his baseless claims about the potential for mail-in voter fraud — were one of the few clear signs that the president now realizes how deep a hole he has dug for himself in his re-election effort. Aides have described him as pained by the widespread rejection he is seeing in public opinion polls, even as he continues with self-sabotaging behavior rather than taking steps that might help him, like getting involved in negotiations for a deal on Capitol Hill to lift the economy.
“With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history,” Mr. Trump wrote. “It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”
Mr. Trump later pinned the tweet at the top of his Twitter feed, ensuring people would continue to see it. Hours later, despite warnings from his campaign officials that delays are likely in tabulating results on Nov. 3, Mr. Trump said in a separate tweet, “Must know Election results on the night of the Election, not days, months or even years later!”
That second statement reflects a concern that Democrats have given voice to — that Mr. Trump will try to focus on the same-day voting tallies to claim victory, even when the full results may be unknown for days.
At a late-afternoon briefing with reporters, Mr. Trump defended the initial tweet, saying that he feared delays in counting votes. But he declined to elaborate on whether he was seriously proposing moving the election.
Mr. Trump posted the first tweet shortly after the Commerce Department announced that the gross domestic product for the second quarter of the year had fallen precipitously by 9.5 percent, reflecting the widespread shutdown of businesses beginning in March to combat the spread of the coronavirus.
Mr. Trump, who often tests the boundaries of his authority, has increasingly used public comments to lay groundwork for arguing that the election results are illegitimate if he loses. Though he does not have the constitutional authority to unilaterally change the date of the election, his tweet prompted a now-familiar round of assertions about what his true intention was with his statement.
