The Harris campaign is preparing for former President Donald Trump to declare the election as rigged and claim that he won the White House before all the votes are even counted.
For weeks, Trump has laid the groundwork that the election will be rigged against him and that the only reason he would lose is if the Democrats cheated. Without evidence, he has already claimed this week that the entire state of Pennsylvania is cheating just days before Election Day.
Harris spokesperson Ian Sams said on Friday Trump is promoting claims of election fraud because he believes he is losing.
“This is a moment of weakness for him. He sees that his numbers are not what they need to be, among seniors, among men. He sees the way he’s losing women by historic margin, and he is scared he’s going to lose. That is what’s driving this. So he’s making up baseless claims of fraud even before we get to Election Day, because he’s scared he’s going to lose this race, and he’s desperate to blame anything other than himself,” Sams said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Similar to 2020, Trump’s team is expected to file lawsuits questioning the results of the election. However, Sams said they are prepared to respond to likely lawsuits in the coming days. He said that the Harris team has “hundreds of lawyers across this country who are ready to protect the vote, to make sure that there’s election integrity in this election, and to hold Donald Trump accountable.”
“Already right now we are seeing these sort of press release stunt lawsuits that the RNC and the Trump campaign do, and we’re not just sitting around waiting. We’re going into court to force decisions early so that we can beat them. We’ve won two dozen cases just in the last month of these bogus claims that Republicans are putting out there because they’re not rooted in fact,” he said.
“And at the end of the day, we are confident that our institutions will hold. We’re confident that we will win in court because the facts are on our side. And the only reason. Donald Trump is doing this is because he’s worried he’s going to lose. He’s worried he can’t win this election fair and square,” he continued.
“And it’s because he’s probably seeing what we’re seeing, which is the voters that are going to decide this election are making up their minds and they’re going for Vice President Harris,” he added.
Marc E. Elias, the founder of Democracy Docket, told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Thursday that Trump is only filing lawsuits “to create a grievance structure.”
“Trump uses litigation not to win cases. He uses litigation as a tool to affect the political environment. He wants people to believe that there is chaos. He wants to be to lay the groundwork ahead for a grievance structure that allows him to say that he was cheated rather than he lost fair and square. But none of that is going to change the outcome. Like at the end of the day, Donald Trump is going to lie about the outcome of the 2024, election,” he said.
“People, keep asking me, ‘Am I worried about him declaring victory before the ballots are counted? Well, he lies about everything. So why wouldn’t he lie about that? I mean, you cover every night his lies. So yes he will lie about the outcome of the election, but that’s not going to change the results. So if people vote, and people do their part in getting out the vote, you know, let’s not worry about Donald Trump’s lies because we’re not going to convince him to stop doing that,” Elias added.
This year’s election marks the first presidential race since former President Donald Trump began a campaign of lies about a stolen 2020 election — a narrative that has undermined public confidence in election results among a wide swath of conservative voters, despite no evidence of widespread fraud.
Election experts have warned that Trump may be laying the groundwork to once again challenge the election if he loses.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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