Trump
© Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty ImagesUS President Donald Trump in North Carolina
President Donald Trump seemed to suggest that North Carolina residents should attempt to vote twice in order to ensure the integrity of the state's absentee ballot system.

The White House now says the president was not specifically urging North Carolina voters to break election law.

White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere told Daily Caller this morning:
"No one has fought harder for an election system that is fair and free from fraud and abuse than President Trump. This idea that he is encouraging people to vote twice is yet another example of the media taking him out of context and ignoring the facts."
A second White House official not cleared to address the issue further told Daily Caller that
"we have been hearing for months by Democrats and the media that our system is perfect and can handle this mass mail-in vote concept."

"All the President is saying is that if you get your ballot — solicited or unsolicited — by mail, fill it out, and mail it back in but on election day go verify that it has been received and counted. If it has not then you should be able to vote in person."
The president echoed this line in a series of tweets Thursday morning:



Trump, asked during a Wednesday interview with WECT what he thought of the projected 600,000 North Carolina voters expected to cast absentee ballots this election, responded that
"they will vote, and then they are going to have to check their vote by going to the poll and voting that way because if it tabulates then they won't be able to do that.

"Let them send it in and let them go vote. If the system is as good as they say it is, then they obviously won't be able to vote. If it isn't tabulated, they will be able to vote. So that's the way it is, and that's what they should do."

"I don't like the idea of these unsolicited votes. I never did. It leads to a lot of problems. But send your ballots, send them in strong, whether it's solicited or unsolicited. The absentees are fine. But go to vote and if they haven't counted it, you can vote. That's the way I view it."

WECT noted that North Carolina's voting system makes it "clerically impossible" to vote both by mail and at an in-person polling location.

The president traveled Wednesday to North Carolina to declare Wilmington the nation's first "World War II Heritage City." He remarked to attendees in front of the USS North Carolina:

"American warriors did not defeat fascism and oppression overseas only to watch our freedoms be trampled by violent mobs here at home. In Portland, the mayor last night, he was raided, his home was raided — he was thrown out of his home."