The guest list at the White House on Monday was quite dramatic. In the wake of Donald Trump’s failed summit in Alaska with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the American president welcomed the leaders of several European nations, who presented a united front on resolving Russia’s war in Ukraine in ways that didn’t favor the dictator in Moscow.

Then Trump hosted an Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during which the Republican became rather animated — but not about the largest war in Europe since World War II. Rather, the American president got worked up talking about how much he hates when Americans vote by casting ballots through the mail.

As the White House moves forward with its multifaceted anti-election campaign that encompasses everything from the census to gerrymandering, Trump has renewed a crusade against postal balloting — even turning to Putin for validation, as if the Russian tyrant were a reliable source on how best to administer a free and fair election.

The Republican was quite candid about his motivations, declaring on Monday that if he and his party are successful in stopping Americans from taking advantage of mail-in voting, “you’re not gonna have many Democrats get elected.”

To justify this radical and aggressive offensive against this form of voting, Trump is peddling a variety of stale lies. More importantly, he’s claiming legal authority he does not have. But whether he realizes it or not, the president is also taking steps that won’t do his party any favors. Politico reported that he’s “once again threatening to undermine” a Republican electoral priority.

Republicans poured tens of millions of dollars last year into convincing their voters that casting ballots by mail was safe after Trump spent years bashing the practice and baselessly insisting it was rife with fraud. And it worked, with GOP voters closing or even reversing the mail voting gap with Democrats in several states. But now Trump is attacking mail voting again as he ratchets up his push to protect Republicans’ House majority in the midterms, scrambling a strategy Republicans effectively used to bank millions of votes in 2024.

Politico quoted Barrett Marson, a longtime GOP consultant in Arizona, who said voting by mail “historically has been an advantage for Republicans” in the Grand Canyon State and is a “safe and secure way to vote and has been for a generation in Arizona.” He added, however, that as the president sows “distrust” in the process and Democrats step up their game, the result is “not good” for Republicans.

It would be tough to blame GOP voters for feeling confused at this point. For years, Trump, the party’s undisputed leader, has veered wildly between two opposite positions. On the one hand, he’s falsely condemned mail-in voting as irredeemably corrupt and “stupid.” On the other hand, in between delivering those condemnations, the president has also encouraged rank-and-file GOP voters to cast their ballots through the mail.

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At one point in 2023, Trump even told attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference that it was time for Republicans to “change our thinking” on mail-in voting, and soon after, he filmed a video for the Republican National Committee in support of the party’s early voting initiative.

And then he switched back to his other position.

“Mail-in voting is totally corrupt. Get that through your head,” Trump declared in February 2024, stepping all over his party’s message. “It has to be. The votes. I mean, it has to be.”

In the months that followed, he changed his mind — and then changed it back. Several times.

Now, the president intends to lead a “movement” against mail-in balloting, and it’s easy to imagine that Democrats are hoping he keeps this going through 2025 and into the 2026 elections.