Trump identifies a scapegoat in case he loses

Why it matters: It's the latest sign of how Trump's false claims of election fraud in 2020 are at the core of the GOP's identity — and the "if I don't win, they cheated" mantra Trump has continued into the 2024 campaign.

• Under Whatley — and at Trump's insistence — Republicans say they've amassed 200,000 poll watchers and poll workers across the country.
• It's an unprecedented program that's partly aimed at collecting evidence of voter fraud at a time when Republicans have filed scores of lawsuits targeting voting eligibility rules, ballot-processing procedures and other issues.
• Within the GOP, the program is actually a bigger priority than on-the-ground efforts to reach voters.

Zoom in: At a rally in North Carolina last month, Trump singled out Whatley, a former GOP chair in the state.

• "Where are you, Michael? Stand up. We're counting on this guy. I didn't take him from any other state. I took him right from here," Trump said.
• "So Michael, you better win or you're never going to be able to come back here. He doesn't win, he won't be at RNC and he will no longer be in North Carolina. He'll be looking for a job," Trump added.
• In fact, in private conversations with allies recently, Trump has said he believes the only reason he could lose the election is if Whatley drops the ball on "election integrity" issues.

Between the lines: Whatley has gone to significant lengths to placate Trump when it comes to the ex-president's pet issue.

• Besides recruiting and training its sprawling roster of poll watchers, Whatley's RNC has sent Trump supporters who want to be poll workers to their county or state secretary of state offices that run paid poll worker programs.
• Whatley also has hired lawyers such as Christina Bobb, a leading purveyor of false fraud claims about the 2020 election.
• At the same time, the RNC has pushed out lawyers such as Charlie Spies, who has rejected false voting conspiracies such as claims that voting machines switch votes.

What they're saying: Whatley declined to comment.

• "Chairman Whatley has done a phenomenal job leading the RNC," top Trump campaign aides Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita told Axios in a statement.
• "President Trump and his team have the utmost confidence in Chairman Whatley and everything the RNC has done to win this election."

The big picture: Trump believes that he alone can turn out the vote for Republicans. So early on, he instructed Whatley and the RNC to focus on "election integrity" and leave turning out the vote to him.

• "Our primary focus is not to get out to vote," Trump said at a campaign rally in Asheboro, N.C., in August. "It's to make sure [Democrats] don't cheat, because we have all the votes you need."

Reality check: There's no evidence of significant election fraud in recent U.S. elections.

• Democrats see Republicans' integrity units as overkill — an effort to solve a made-up problem that's largely aimed at giving Trump a way to claim he doesn't lose elections.

The intrigue: Whatley has been clear-eyed about the risks of his position, according to a colleague who warned him before he became RNC chair that he would the target of Trump's wrath if the ex-president lost on Nov. 5.

• "'He's like, 'I know that if we lose, I'm gonna get the blame,' " the colleague told Axios.