After weeks of recycling discredited election conspiracies infused with racist attacks against Democratic candidates, President Donald Trump ended the campaign at the Reflecting Pool on a serene note by reflecting that Republicans “gave this a very strong shot.”
And as American went to the polls across the country a day later, the president gave a sanguine review of his second term in an interview with his former FBI deputy director, Dan Bongino, celebrating Washington, DC’s “booming” restaurants and parks, adding, “The Reflecting Pool is gorgeous.”
Does that mean that, whatever the results of the election, Trump will accept the results? History suggests it isn’t likely.
Addressing the nation from the East Room of the White House at 2:21 a.m. on Nov. 4, 2020, following Election Day, Trump said, “We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.”
In 2020 — much the same as he has done in the 2026 midterm campaign — Trump had seeded his eventual claim that the election was stolen with an incessant drumbeat of statements falsely accusing Democrats of election fraud and questioning ballot security.
The consistent pattern of election denialism has many observers bracing for chaos in the weeks after enough races are called to get a sense of whether the Democrats, as polls predict, will retake the House and even potentially the Senate.
“I expect that Donald Trump will be live-tweeting whatever insane thing he sees on TV that reinforces his conspiracy theories and drums up his base,” Kristofer Goldsmith, founder of Veterans Fighting Fascism, told Raw Story. “There’s nothing more powerful for a demagogue than a victimhood narrative, and I can very easily see him promoting the idea that ‘you Americans are the real victims because they stole the election.’
"That is a great way to motivate people to commit violence against their fellow Americans.”
Veterans Fighting Fascism members are organizing a “Democracy March” in Washington, DC on Veterans Day. They hope to mobilize thousands of veterans to reaffirm their oath to the Constitution and reject any effort by Trump and his allies to undermine the election result.
Trump’s false declaration of victory following the 2020 election was preplanned, according to the final report of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. The committee uncovered emails showing that Tom Fitton, president of the conservative nonprofit Judicial Watch, emailed Trump a draft statement on Oct. 31, 2020 that encouraged him to say: “We had an election today — and I won.”
The statement falsely claimed that Election Day was the “deadline by which voters in states across the country must choose a president,” and that counting ballots that arrived later would amount to an effort by “partisans” to “overturn” the results.
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This time around, Fitton is publicly calling the election results into question before the ballots are even counted. Responding to an appellate court decision Monday that put a halt to federal interference in California’s election administration, Fitton posted on X: “Federal courts trying to help rig elections?”
In a video posted on X on Monday evening, Fitton previewed what is likely to be a line of attack by Trump and his allies by targeting Alaska and Minnesota, along with California. The Department of Justice has filed suit seeking to block certification of the Alaska Senate race due to the presence of a third candidate on the ballot with a name similar to the Republican incumbent. Minnesota has become a target due to unsubstantiated claims repeatedly pushed by Trump on the campaign trail that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) used a fake name to get elected to Congress.
“You can’t trust the outcomes in California,” Fitton said. “The Senate election in Alaska’s ruined…. And then you have a federal election in the heart of Minnesota for Ilhan Omar that’s been compromised by significant evidence that she’s been running under a fake name.”
When he preemptively declared victory in 2020, the votes in Arizona, Pennsylvania and other swing states were still being counted. In the run-up to today’s midterm elections, Trump has leaned into the same conspiracy theory that delays in vote counts are proof of election fraud.
Difficulties across the country caused by everything from machine malfunction to flooding, are likely to provide fodder for baseless fraud claims. In Westchester County, part of the New York’s 17th Congressional District — a seat critical to the GOP’s efforts to retain control of the House — officials have said they expect a delay in the vote count. In North Carolina, where Democrats hope to flip a Republican Senate seat and two critical races could determine which party controls the House, election officials announced extending voting by 45 minutes in four counties, and pushing back the release of results until 8:15 p.m., from 7:30 p.m.
While Fitton preemptively delegitimized the election results, Jennica Pounds, a pro-Trump internet influencer linked to the Pentagon, appeared to prepare her followers for uncertainty following the election.
Pounds, who has been pushing a narrative that Trump’s opponents are planning a “color revolution,” told her followers in an X post on Monday that a nebulous, unnamed group of powerful elites has “engineered plans for all outcomes in tomorrow’s elections. No matter what happens, there will be a new narrative being forced upon us top down.”
Mark Zaid, a lawyer who has represented clients targeted for retribution by the Trump administration, said that due to the precedent set by the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Americans can no longer afford to take for granted that violence will not follow irresponsible political rhetoric.
But Zaid said that if Trump refuses to accept the outcome of the elections and attempts to rile up his supporters, he remains confident that local election officials and the courts will hold the line.
“I expect all jurisdictions handling elections and counting votes today will do so in the same proper manner that they have done for decades, if not centuries,” he told Raw Story.
“Fortunately, the sins of the past are being taken seriously by people today and those who favor democracy — both Democrat and Republican — are taking all possible steps to proactively protect the integrity of the system and will legally react however is necessary should threats emerge, including from the federal government.”