Through public remarks, Truth Social screeds and more than 100 preemptive lawsuits, Donald Trump is assembling a detailed catalog of excuses for rejecting the results of the 2024 election — if he loses.
Listen to Trump: The former president, who risks jail time and more criminal trials if he loses, has expanded his range of baseless attacks on U.S. voting procedures in recent weeks and months.
Zoom in: The millions of undocumented migrants who have crossed into the U.S. during the Biden administration are a top campaign issue. They’re also being used to fuel new voter fraud conspiracy theories.
- Earlier this month, Trump demanded that House Republicans use the threat of a government shutdown to pass a measure requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.
- That effort failed, but it gave Trump and Republicans a new excuse to claim election fraud — even though it’s already illegal and exceedingly rare for non-citizens to vote in U.S. elections.
Between the lines: Even without evidence of voting irregularities, Trump is preparing to deploy broader rhetorical arguments for why the election was fundamentally unfair.
- The former president has accused Democrats of “cheating” by swapping out President Biden for Vice President Kamala Harris in June, and engaging in “lawfare” through criminal prosecution.
The big picture: Since 2020, the Republican Party apparatus has been reorganized — from the top down — to give credence to Trump’s false claims that election fraud is a scourge on American politics.
- Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee say they’ve built a network of about 175,000 volunteer poll watchers and poll workers, part of a relentless focus on “election integrity.”
- In Georgia, a hard-right election board has passed new rules that Democrats fear could be used to undermine confidence in the results if Trump loses the critical battleground state.
- House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) drew outrage last week by pledging to certify the 2024 election and “follow the Constitution” only if it’s a “free, fair and safe election.”
What to watch: On Nov. 1, 2020, Axios reported that Trump had privately told confidants he planned to prematurely declare victory on election night if it looked like he was “ahead.”
- That’s exactly what he did.