When polling places close across the United States tonight, in the event that Donald Trump appears to be losing, it’s not hard to predict what he and his allies will do to overturn the result between now and Jan. 20.
The early outlines of the MAGA strategy for overturning a potential loss look remarkably similar to what unfolded after the Nov. 3, 2020 election.
Trump and his allies have already laid the groundwork for contesting the outcome through repeated claims that the only way he can lose is if the election is rigged, while suggesting that if the results are not known on election night it can only be explained by fraud.
Meanwhile, fringe supporters are painting targets on counties with large concentrations of Democratic voters in battleground states. They’re preparing to pressure state lawmakers to overturn the result in a campaign reminiscent of the 2020 “Stop the Steal” movement, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
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The efforts currently underway to preemptively undermine the legitimacy of any outcome that doesn’t favor Trump are taking place as provocateurs in the far-right media ecosystem bristle with talk of “war” and a “bloodbath.” The rhetoric creates an existential framing that makes conceding an election all but unthinkable to many of Trump’s supporters.
Some of Trump’s allies “are speaking in apocalyptic terms about the election, where their political foes are not people they disagree with on policy, but demons — people who threaten the very safety and security of Trump supporters,” Jared Holt, a senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told Raw Story.
He added that Trump’s allies pair absolutist language that is commonplace in political campaigns with “fantasies of retribution, in some cases including violence.” In some cases, they talk about “wanting the maximum punishment for treason, which is a state execution,” Holt added.
Of course, it’s entirely possible that Trump will win the election outright, and his supporters will have no reason to try to overturn the result.
But if Trump and his allies attempt to overturn an election result favoring Vice President Kamala Harris, Holt and other analysts caution that their success is far from a foregone conclusion.
“As much planning as has happened on the political right to contest the election, there’s been so much work by everybody from civil society to lawmakers to anticipate and prepare for this threat,” Holt said. “Even though they might be more organized and steadfast to contest this election, I don’t think it’s going to be cakewalk for them. There have been a lot of people working to defend the process.”
Declare victory before all the votes are counted
Despite the fact there is no evidence to support it, Trump and his supporters now take it as a given that the election is marred by widespread fraud.
“They are fighting so hard to steal this damn thing,” Trump said during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania on Sunday. “Look at what’s going on in your state. Every day, they’re talking about extending hours. Whoever heard of this stuff?
“These elections — they have to be decided by 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock on Tuesday night,” the former president added, his voice quivering with anger. “Bunch of crooked people. These are crooked people.”
Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime confidant, has also promoted the baseless claim that if the election remains too close to call on Election Night it will likely be the result of Democrats cheating.
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“I think the longer it goes, the more likely that they are maneuvering to find some way to flip the election,” he told an interviewer last month.
In October 2020, former White House strategist Steve Bannon privately disclosed that Trump would “just declare victory” on election night, whether he was the winner or not. At 2:30 a.m., Trump did just that, announcing during a speech at the White House: “We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.”
Soon after his release from federal prison last week for defying a subpoena from the House Select January 6th Committee, Bannon told reporters that Trump should do more or less the same thing this time.
“He should have done it at 11 o’clock at night, okay?” Bannon said. “I am urging President Trump — if the votes come in like it looks like they’re going to come in — he should step up and inform the American citizens of exactly what’s going on and not keep people in the dark, like was done in 2020.”
Swarm vote counting centers
Should Trump tell his supporters on election night that his rightful victory is being snatched away through fraud, the 2020 election suggests that conspiracy theories will swirl around the counties in battleground states with the largest populations and highest concentrations of Democratic voters.
The same six or seven battleground states are in play this year, as in 2020, when Trump supporters banged on windows and attempted to disrupt the vote count in Detroit and showed up with guns outside election centers in Phoenix and Philadelphia.
Ivan Raiklin, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who promoted a plan known as “Operation Pence Card” to disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election, is calling on Trump supporters to film election officials in “states and counties where they do not finish the election counting by midnight Nov. 5,” while singling out Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The National File, a far-right online publication run by political consultant Noel Fritsch, has echoed Raiklin’s efforts to focus attention on critical counties in battleground states. In a post on X last week, the publication claimed that “a color revolution is being executed in real time,” while baselessly accusing Democratic district attorneys in select jurisdictions of being unwilling to prosecute fraud. The list included the counties that cover Detroit, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Wis. and Raleigh, N.C.
Holt said it’s difficult to predict whether protests outside election centers will materialize after Election Day, as they did in 2020. He noted that Trump attempted to mobilize his supporters with incendiary statements during the 2022 midterm elections, and supporters failed to respond.
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“I think the answer to that is an unsatisfying wait and see,” Holt told Raw Story. “This will play out on a local and state level first. Within a week or two, I think we’ll have a better sense of how much fuel exists in the tank for the Trump campaign to work with.”
Take to the streets, target state lawmakers
Beyond possible mobilizations at election centers in the days immediately following the election, calls for sustained protests of the type seen in 2020 have been relatively rare. However, a few notable figures outline specific plans.
“If we have 50 state capitals making themselves heard peacefully — peacefully and everything, constitutionally — that’s how we have to show our support,” Patrick Byrne, a prominent election denier who met with Trump at the White House in December 2020, told conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Sunday. The clip Jones posted on X has been viewed about 500,000 times.
The choice of state capitals aligns with an effort promoted by Raiklin and Fritsch to pressure Republican state legislatures in battleground states to short-circuit the popular vote and directly award their electoral votes to Trump.
During an appearance at the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival last month, Raiklin said, “Every single person listening to me here needs to be ready, willing and able” on Dec. 1, when the new Pennsylvania legislature convenes to “go to Harrisburg, confront your state rep, confront your state senator, and say, ‘Guess what? Here’s all the evidence of the illegitimate steal.’”
Over the past year, some figures in the far-right media ecosystem have framed the election as an existential battle between good and evil, between patriots and foreign elements attempting to destroy America. Anticipation of a violent showdown colors how some Trump allies envision protests if their candidate doesn’t win. Almost always, the claim is that Trump’s opponents will be orchestrating the violence, and not the other way around.
Byrne told Jones that he believes a Venezuelan street gang has received orders “to start a race war” in major American cities that would begin on Election Day or the following day. He also made the preposterous prediction that Harris and her allies would mobilize “rent-a-mobs” that would garner mainstream media praise by opposing Trump.
Another supporter, former Newsmax correspondent Emerald Robinson, wrote on X last month: “You must be ready to peacefully protest when your vote is stolen in 11 days. And you must be ready for the main question in any communist revolution: Will our soldiers obey an illegal order to shoot civilians & suspend the Constitution?”
While the rhetoric from Trump focuses on state repression, Holt said he worries that the letdown from an electoral loss could send some supporters over the edge.
“If a portion of the Trump audience is all excited about the prospect that they’re going to see all kinds of punishment dealt out against people they believe are working for their safety and security, and it all falls thorough,” he said, “there is a possibility that some percentage — a small percentage — could feel compelled to act in some way, including ways that are criminal and violent.”
Pete Santilli, a Cincinnati-based broadcaster who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer in the 2014 Bundy Ranch standoff, said on his program last week that if Harris is declared president, he intends to “rally people to the public square… and we will stay there until they evacuated.”
While Santilli insisted that the protest would be peaceful, he added, “I will proudly state that if anybody harms those protesters, and you want to bring war and you want to start shooting people, let it be on my watch. Because I’m gonna say that there’s 100 million people with 400 million guns that are gonna protect the peaceful protesters.”
Holt said he’s less worried about Santilli’s capacity to organize than “what his rhetoric inspires other people to do.”
Based on the past two election cycles, Holt said he expects state legislators and other officials to face pressure from Trump supporters if they are perceived to be impediments to his return to power.
“There’s a lot of people who are going to be on the receiving end of harassment and threats; they have been since 2020,” Holt said. “I don’t think this election is going to be a period of reprieve.”
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