Former President Donald Trump is already sowing seeds of doubt in the fairness of the 2024 election, claiming that there is "cheating" going on in the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania.
"Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before. REPORT CHEATING TO AUTHORITIES. Law Enforcement must act, NOW!" Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Wednesday morning.
He made a similar comment at another partly empty rally in Allentown Tuesday night, saying the Democrats "have already started cheating” in Pennsylvania.
Of course, there is no evidence Democrats are cheating.
Trump appears to be referencing the Lancaster County Board of Elections' announcement last Friday that it is investigating 2,500 voter registration applications for being fraudulent.
The announcement makes no reference to Democrats, nor who was behind the fraud. The board of elections only said that the bogus applications it found were the result of paid canvassers submitting registration applications, adding that the fact the board found them should inspire confidence.
"Our systems worked. We will continue to operate with the highest levels of veracity, integrity, and transparency so that Lancaster County voters can be confident in our election," the board wrote in a news release.
Whipping his supporters up into believing the election is fraudulent, however, is all part of Trump's plan to try to claim the election was illegitimate if he loses on Nov. 5.
It’s the playbook Trump and his allies employed in 2020 to try to steal the election from President Joe Biden, making absurd and baseless accusations of voter fraud to try and get the courts to overturn the results.
But Trump and his allies never actually presented evidence of voter fraud, and his lawsuits seeking to flip the election were tossed out by numerous federal judges who chastised Trump for making such baseless and absurd claims.
“Charges of unfairness are serious,” Trump-appointed federal Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote in a November 2020 decision tossing a Trump lawsuit in Pennsylvania. “But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”
Ultimately, the fact that Trump is making accusations of unfairness and cheating in Pennsylvania a week before any votes have been counted is a sign he doesn’t believe he’s winning in the crucial battleground that could decide the outcome of the election.
"If you're really confident that you're going to win outright on election night, you don't have to spend all this time and energy with a prebuttal set of lies about why everything is rigged,” MSNBC host Ari Melber said Wednesday on “Morning Joe.” “If you’re playing well, you’re not talking about the refs.”
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