Former President Barack Obama accused President Donald Trump of trying to "actively kneecap the Postal Service" to affect mail-in voting in the November election.
Obama made his comments during an interview on the Campaign HQ podcast hosted by his former campaign manager David Plouffe.
Trump on Thursday blamed the stalemate over the coronavirus stimulus bill on Democrats, who are pushing for additional funds for the post office.
"They want $25 billion for the post office," he said. "Now, they need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots. Now, in the meantime, they aren't getting there."
But Obama pushed back, saying: "What we've never seen before is a president say, 'I'm going to try to actively kneecap the Postal Service to encourage voting, and I will be explicit about the reason I'm doing it.' That's sort of unheard of, right? And we also have not had an election in the midst of a pandemic that is still deadly and killing a lot of people.
"So in that circumstance, the thing I'm most worried about is … how do we protect the integrity of the election process? How do we make sure that people's votes are counted? How do we police and monitor how state officials are setting up polling places and ensuring that every vote is counted? So, there is a whole bunch of work to be done there."