Former New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, a Republican, conceded on CNN that President Donald Trump's reported decision to vote by mail in Florida's Republican primary undermines the president's own long-running attacks on the practice, admitting he "wish[es] I wasn't defending that on CNN tonight."

Trump, who has repeatedly denounced mail-in ballots as "cheating" and "fraud," reportedly voted by mail in Florida's Republican primary. The contradiction became the focus of a panel discussion on CNN's "The Source," hosted by Dana Bash, who opened the segment by playing a mashup of the president's past statements attacking mail-in voting before turning to Sununu, who had attempted to defend Trump's position, for a response.

"Optics matter," Sununu said. "I support the president, but this is definitely a bad move. I'm very much against mail-in voting myself, and I think it's rife with a whole lot of problems. We don't have it in New Hampshire. We have the highest voter turnout in the country. So no, you can't go around railing on mail-in voting and then go ahead and do it yourself. It kind of deflates the argument a little bit. So, [I] wish I wasn't defending that on CNN tonight."

Sununu served four terms as New Hampshire's governor, from 2017 to 2025, opting not to seek re-election in 2024 and later joining CNN as a political commentator. New Hampshire does not offer no-excuse mail voting, relying instead on in-person voting with absentee ballots available only under limited circumstances — a system Sununu credited with producing the highest voter turnout in the country. Florida stands at the other end of the spectrum: it is among the majority of states that let any registered voter request a mail ballot without an excuse, and five states — Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington — conduct their elections almost entirely by mail. Trump, for his part, has attacked mail-in voting since the 2020 election cycle, when the practice expanded sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic, and he has continued to claim that mail ballots are vulnerable to fraud despite his own reported use of the method in Florida. Government reviews and academic studies have consistently found mail-ballot fraud to be rare, with the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency calling the 2020 election "the most secure in American history." The Republican Party, meanwhile, has leaned into the method operationally, launching a "Bank Your Vote" campaign in 2023 urging supporters to cast ballots early and by mail.

Bill de Blasio, the former Democratic mayor of New York City who served from 2014 to 2021 and appeared alongside Sununu on the panel, argued that Trump's attacks on mail-in voting could damage his standing heading into the midterm elections. De Blasio's aside referenced two other controversies that have followed the president — his push to build a ballroom at the White House and a luxury jet gifted by Qatar for potential use as Air Force One — as well as the broader electoral stakes in November 2026, when control of Congress will be decided and the party holding the White House has historically lost ground in most midterm cycles.

"The bottom line is these kinds of hypocrisies, this kind of personal obsession, whether it's the ballroom, mail-in voting, [or] the Qatari jet, he's just losing," de Blasio said. "He's losing his audience more and more, and I don't know how they're going to change course between now and the midterms at this point."

Source: Raw Story