While US President Donald Trump criticized the prospects of using mail-in ballots in the 2020 election, arguing that it might open the electoral process up to interference and fraud, footage from over a decade ago recently started circulating online, apparently showing Trump using an absentee ballot to vote.
According to CNN, the video in question is an "Access Hollywood" segment “filmed as Trump was attempting to vote in the 2004 election”.
The video shows Trump, after having been blocked from voting at multiple NYC locations he and host Billie Bush visit due to the former not being on any of the voter rolls, declaring his intent to “fill out the absentee ballot” and then “filling out what Bush describes as a provisional ballot in his car”, as the media outlet puts it.
As the video spread on Twitter, with some of the posters arguing that Trump did “vote by mail”, a number of social media users argued that there's actually a difference between mail-in voting and absentee voting.
However, there also seemed to be no shortage of netizens eager to criticize Trump on this occasion as well.