From the moment Vice President Kamala Harris emerged as the surprise Democratic presidential nominee, former president Donald Trump began arguing that she was anointed through a “coup” rather than chosen by primary voters. After barely mentioning election integrity at the Republican convention in July, Trump is now casting the upcoming election as “rigged” against him and baselessly labeling any hurdle in his path as election interference.
“This was an overthrow of a president. This was an overthrow,” Trump said at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on Saturday, referring to Harris replacing Biden on the ticket. He later added: “They deposed a president. It was a coup of a president. This was a coup.”
Trump’s efforts to undermine confidence in this year’s election are reminiscent of the tactics he used in the 2020 campaign and indicate how he could again seek to delegitimize the results if he loses, setting the stage for another combustible fight over the presidency, election and national security experts said.
“This is Donald Trump’s playbook: ‘There’s a deep state, they’re all out to get me,’” said Elizabeth Neumann, who served as a senior Department of Homeland Security official during the Trump administration and is now among his conservative critics. “Even here — as he’s going to have to face a stronger, harder candidate to defeat — his default is, ‘Well, this couldn’t possibly be legal. This is a coup. This is wrong,’ even though there are no facts to back that up.”
While some of this is “just for show,” Neumann said, Trump and his allies are also setting up the “next version of ‘Stop the Steal.’”
Trump has long insisted that his political failures are the result of some malevolent force trying to keep him out of power, and he has weakened faith in the U.S. election system despite widespread evidence that the results can be trusted. When asked to comment for this article, Trump’s campaign responded with a statement attacking Harris and again characterizing her nomination as part of a “coup.”
“President Trump and our campaign have never been more confident that we are going to win this election,” spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said.
When Trump first ran for president in 2016, he falsely claimed that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) stole the Iowa caucuses, and he told his supporters that the general election was “absolutely being rigged” against him. After winning, he falsely said his loss in the popular vote was due to “millions of people who voted illegally.” In 2020, he baselessly claimed the influx of mail-in ballots amid the global pandemic led to widespread fraud that cost him the election, and as Congress gathered to certify the results, Trump supporters violently attacked the U.S. Capitol and tried to halt the process.
For months, Trump had boasted that he was on a glide path to victory in a rematch against Biden, and he told his supporters the only way he could lose was if Democrats cheated. But he began ratcheting up his warnings about the election process when Harris began drawing massive crowds and surpassed him in several national and swing state polls, including some in which he had led Biden.
