'Sorest loser in American history' Trump has three-part plan to steal the election: expert

Donald Trump and his allies have reportedly been operating a parallel campaign to regain power that would rely on three key strategies to overturn the will of the voters.

The former president has been setting the stage to overturn an election loss, as he tried to do in 2020, by repeatedly refusing to pledge he would accept the results and peddling lies, conspiracy theories and xenophobia, but The Bulwark's Dennis Aftergut argued there's a method to his madness.

"Trump is the sorest loser in American history," Aftergut wrote. "Trump and his allies are (1) softening the public’s belief in the legitimacy of election results ahead of time by hammering the message that the election will be rigged; (2) abusing the courts with pre-election lawsuits as a launching pad for the claim that he was the real winner; and (3) inciting anger among his followers — including perhaps armed militants eager to turn to violence — should he suffer election defeat."

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When Ted Cruz won Iowa's Republican primary in 2016, Trump accused him of stealing it, and he suggested repeatedly that Hillary Clinton would rig that November's election and then said the same thing about Joe Biden in 2020 before embarking on a wide-ranging plan to steal it himself.

"This time, Trump is even more desperate than in 2020 because he’s been indicted," Aftergut wrote. "He needs the shield of presidential immunity from the trials and potential prison time that await him unless he is elected. So he’s working overtime to get not just his supporters but also the press and the wider public to shrug off the post-election denialist threat as just Trump being Trump."

The best way to prevent that from happening is running up the score to make his loss impossible to deny, Aftergut wrote, but Republicans have already filed a flurry of pre-election lawsuits aimed at disenfranchising likely Democratic voters, and even if most of them fail they provide Trump with a narrative that the courts didn't do enough to protect election integrity.

"There is a propaganda value to court cases creating media narratives that can raise questions about election processes," Aftergut wrote. "The value is that if Trump loses, he can point even to frivolous cases his allies lost, claim they were wrongly decided and say that he would and should have won the election had the courts ruled properly. And then, lying in wait, there’s the Supreme Court and its right-wing majority, ready to raise Trump from the dead if he loses."

Once again, Aftergut wrote, an overwhelming margin against Trump blunts that strategy, which is why he has been stoking violence in the final weeks of this campaign, just as he did leading up to Jan. 6.

"You might be wondering why Trump has of late been leaning ever harder into insanity on the campaign trail," Aftergut wrote. "Maybe he just can’t help himself. Maybe it’s accelerating mental degradation associated with aging and the stresses of campaigning. But it serves a strategic end: riling up his most extreme supporters to enlist their violence if he loses."

Trump has been telling his supporters that immigrants are crazed murderers and an existential threat to the nation, and he openly encouraged police officers to violently crack down on crime, if only for "one rough hour."

"Consider how Trump’s most violent followers will hear that message: Street violence is the way to solve problems, including the nonexistent problem of 'replacing' white Americans with immigrant murderers who will poison the country’s gene pool," Aftergut wrote. "A large popular-vote majority would do two important things: discourage many from joining in violence as they might in a close election, and bolster the forces of law and order in quickly bringing any such violence to an end."