#WH press secretary McEnany slams de Blasio, NY mail-in ballots

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Tuesday that New York’s “absolute catastrophe” with mail-in ballots is a “dark omen” for November and that Mayor Bill de Blasio is having an “awfully hard time” taking on violent crime.

McEnany unloaded on the Big Apple’s policies after President Trump a day earlier threatened to send federal officers into New York City if Gov. Andrew Cuomo did not curb a spike in violent crime.

She said federal action was not imminent, but that local leaders should crack down on violence and rethink mail-in balloting practices.

Trump “thinks the mayor and the governor should work together to take control of the streets of New York City, where in some places we’ve seen a 600 percent surge in violence over last year,” McEnany said at a White House press briefing.

“It’s ultimately the power of the mayor to enforce, and the governor to enforce the police power of their states — that power rests with them, but they can partner with the federal government in the event they’re unable to enjoy the violence in their cities,” McEnany said. “And that’s certainly what we’ve seen from Mayor de Blasio, who seems to have not a hard time criticizing police officers but an awfully hard time controlling the streets of New York City.”

On Monday, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, “New York was up 348 percent, the crime wave … if the governor is not going to do something about it, we’ll do something about it.”

Last week, the Department of Homeland Security deployed officers to Portland to protect a federal courthouse, and 150 DHS officers reportedly may be deployed to Chicago this week — though McEnany said Tuesday they have not been dispatched.

“We don’t have secretive operations going on. It’s very clear what’s going on in Portland,” she said.

McEnany tore into New York state leaders later in the briefing over confusion and delays in determining the outcome of recent primary elections.

“There’s a Wall Street Journal article just out today and it talks about the dark omen for November and the absolute catastrophe in New York City — that we are a month into the election after the voting, and we still don’t know the winners are some of those races,” McEnany said. “And Governor Cuomo decided that he would pre-pay postage for the ballots and what that meant was that the post office didn’t put a postage stamp noting the date of the ballot, and so as they’re collecting these ballots.

“So for a month they’ve been collecting ballots with no postmark date and in fact what they found is 19 percent of ballots have been rejected in Queens, 28 percent rejected in Brooklyn. There are questions about mass mail-in voting. And I know you don’t want to hear them, which is why you talk over me.”