Trump's excuse train

Donald Trump is assembling a detailed catalog of excuses for rejecting the results of the 2024 election — if he loses.

Why it matters: The Trump-aligned efforts to overturn the 2020 election — both overtly and covertly, peacefully then violently — shocked the American public. No one should be surprised this time around.

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.

• Overseas voting: Trump falsely claimed last week that Democrats are exploiting an overseas ballot program for expats and military members in order to circumvent "any citizenship check or verification of identity."
• Early voting: At a rally in Pennsylvania, Trump denounced what he called the "stupid" concept of voting 45 days before the election — floating conspiracy theories about his loss in the crucial swing state four years ago.
• Mail-in voting: Trump has long despised mail-in ballots. He's recently begun attacking the U.S. Postal Service as incompetent and untrustworthy — even as the GOP has pushed its voters to embrace the practice.

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 additional fodder to claim election fraud — even though it's already illegal and exceedingly rare for non-citizens to vote in U.S. elections.

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 exclusively 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.
• Given the likelihood that the election once again will take days to call, don't be surprised to see the former president dust off that same playbook.

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