Republican Amnesia in Action

You’ve got to hand it to Republican Representative Sam Graves from Missouri’s sixth district. In his recent newsletter, he sounded the alarm on the sorry state of mail delivery in rural Missouri. He wrote, “Mail is a lifeline for our rural communities and it’s critical the Postal Service delivers.” He criticized the delays from mail processing centers in Kansas City and St. Louis, called for Inspector General investigations, and demanded that the USPS “make things right.”

Brave words indeed from a man standing in the middle of the wreckage he helped create.

This is political arson: light the match, walk away, and then race back with a bucket of water shouting, “I’ll save you!” Sam Graves and the entire Republican Party have spent years undermining the U.S. Postal Service—through budget strangulation, political appointees like Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, and a relentless push to privatize or shrink public services. And now, with mail delays impacting his constituents, Sam Graves wants credit for noticing the flames.

He writes: “They can’t just keep raising prices, failing to deliver, losing packages, and blaming everyone except the people that actually run the Postal Service.” But where was his outrage in 2020, when Trump openly admitted he opposed USPS funding because it would enable more mail-in voting? Where was Sam Graves when Louis DeJoy dismantled sorting machines, eliminated overtime, and kneecapped delivery operations—especially in rural areas?

Representative Sam Graves seems shocked—“Surprise, surprise, there were major issues,” he wrote, after pushing for an investigation into the Kansas City processing center. But this isn’t a surprise; it’s the logical outcome of a sustained Republican campaign to gut the USPS under the pretense of efficiency and cost-cutting. You don’t get to set fire to a public institution, watch with passive amusement as people run out of the building, and then complain about the lack of service.

And here’s the most insulting part: Sam Graves is counting on us to forget. He’s assuming Missourians can’t remember what happened just a few short years ago—that we’re too distracted, too busy, or too stupid to connect the dots. That’s not just disingenuous—it’s disrespectful. We do remember. We remember Trump’s war on mail-in ballots. We remember the mail delays. We remember Louis DeJoy. And we remember how Sam Graves remained silent while it all unfolded all around him.

His newsletter ends with a plea: “It’s far past time the mail gets delivered on time, six days a week.” Well, duh! The Republican Party that Sam Graves belongs to has long viewed the Postal Service not as a lifeline for rural America but as a bloated bureaucracy ripe for dismantling. And dismantle it they did—until it blew up in their face.

Message to Sam Graves: The people of Missouri aren’t stupid. They know that your outrage is hollow. Missourians deserve leaders who build, not sabotage—who fix systems instead of breaking them for political gain. Until you, Sam Graves, and your criminal Republican colleagues acknowledge the role you all played in this crisis, your complaints are nothing more than a public relations performance. Hollow indignation at best. When Missourians come after you with pitchforks and torches, you’ll know why.

You can’t pretend to be the hero when you’re the one who started the fire. And you sure as hell don’t get to insult the intelligence of Missourians while you do it.