(CNN) - US President Donald Trump said Americans should cast their ballots using "every appropriate means," in a pre-recorded video, urging Republicans to vote in the midterm elections, including using methods he has historically opposed such as early voting and mail-in voting.
Trump said in the video, which was posted on Saturday morning on his account on his “Truth Social” platform: “If your state allows early voting, do not wait. Go out and vote. Vote early, vote by mail, or vote in person on Election Day.”
Trump's letter is noteworthy because he has been critical of mail-in voting for years and has sought to restrict it since the beginning of his second term, although the courts have blocked many of those efforts.
This call comes at a time when Trump's strategy for the midterm elections relied largely on mobilizing his electoral base, and to a lesser extent on persuading hesitant voters to support Republican Party candidates.
“It's all about the voter mobilization game,” a GOP campaign official told CNN last month. "From day one, the president's campaign committees and political machinery have been sharing data to ensure we focus our efforts precisely on the people we need to get to vote."
The Supreme Court last month declined to impose broad restrictions that would have changed the way mail ballots are sent to voters ahead of the midterm elections. This ruling came after state election officials warned that they did not have enough time to implement the provisions emanating from an executive order issued by the president in March.
Trump issued a lengthy comment on social media in response to the ruling, calling the country's mail-in voting system a "disaster" and a source of "ridicule around the world," noting that the United States is the only country forced to endure a "nation-destroying hoax" like this.
The president also aggressively lobbied Congress to impose restrictions on mail-in voting through the Save America Act, a bill to reform the federal electoral system that faced bipartisan opposition in the Senate.
Despite his incorrect claim that mail-in voting led to widespread fraud, Trump himself has continued to vote by mail, including in a Florida House byelection in March.
This is not the first time that the president has contradicted his previous statements regarding voting methods in the period leading up to the elections. In 2024, the Trump campaign launched the “Swamp The Vote USA” initiative to promote absentee voting, mail-in voting, and early voting; The president referred to this program in his video message on Saturday.
CNN reached out to the White House for comment on the video, and whether it represents a shift in the president's view on early voting and voting by mail.
But the president's advisers also privately acknowledge there's a big problem with that strategy: Not only is Trump a huge motivator to encourage his supporters, he's also a powerful driver of Democratic voter turnout.
With one month left until the midterm elections, more than a million votes have already been cast so far. In many states with important races for Senate or governor this fall, Democrats so far make up a larger share of voters who have requested ballots than during the same period in 2024.
In recent years, Democrats have been much more likely to vote before Election Day.
