By all appearances, Donald Trump hates election systems that allow voting by mail even more than he hates windmills. “Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating,” the president said in March. A couple of months later, the Republican added that the very “nature” of postal balloting is, as far as he’s concerned, inherently “corrupt.”

His position, while probably sincere, is rooted in conspiratorial confusion about how such election systems work, but he reiterated his opposition to mail-in voting a few weeks ago, condemning it as a “disaster.” He added, by way of his social media platform, “ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING.”

Around the same time, Trump voted by mail in Florida’s primaries. Three days ago, the president released a video statement in which he encouraged Republicans voters to … take advantage of mail-in voting.

During a Q&A with reporters on Monday, he was asked to reconcile the obvious contradiction.

“Why are you telling your supporters to vote by mail if you think it’s fraud?” a reporter asked.

“Vote by mail or vote in person,” the president replied. “I’d rather have them vote in person, but they can vote by mail if they want. … A lot of people want to vote by mail, but a lot of very good people also want to vote in person. You can do either.”

The exchange quickly devolved from there — Trump made baseless claims about fraud, and when pressed for evidence, he predictably started throwing around the phrase “fake news” — but his underlying answer was an unmistakable mess.

To hear Trump tell it, voters should cast ballots in whatever way works best for them. That might seem like a perfectly normal position for a president to take — except in this instance, Americans have a president who’s fought tooth and nail, not only to condemn mail-in voting in ways that don’t make sense, but also to impose legal restrictions to make voting by mail almost impossible for most Americans.

Indeed, the Republican has spent much of the year championing a sweeping legislative proposal that would impose severe voting restrictions, including prohibitions on the very mail-in voting system he now wants GOP voters to take full advantage of.

Asked for an explanation, Trump didn’t try to resolve the contradiction, so much as he ignored it, as if he didn’t even understand the tension between his positions.

As for how the electorate might respond to this rhetoric, The New York Times reported that Republican officials have expressed fears that “the president’s assaults on mail balloting put them at a competitive disadvantage in a challenging election year.”

It’s an important detail: Officials in both parties invest a lot of time and energy in encouraging their supporters to vote by mail, rather than waiting to vote in person on Election Day. Republican insiders have spent years gnashing their teeth over Trump’s nonsensical rhetoric for the most straightforward of reasons: He’s messing with his own party’s electoral strategies.

It’s possible that the president’s latest message will help the GOP’s efforts, but we’re still left with a party leader who wants the Republican base to believe (a) mail-in voting is a corrupt scourge that’s tantamount to cheating; and (b) it’d be great if they considered doing it anyway.

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