At the time of the Republican Convention, Trump felt sure he was on his way to a landslide victory. He had centered his campaign on the theme that Biden was senile. The attack ads were ready to roll. But only days after the lights were turned off in Milwaukee, Biden announced that he was stepping aside, and he endorsed his Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Trump was furious. How dare Biden decide not to run! Trump began to claim that what the Democrats had done was “unconstitutional” and that it was a “coup.”

Biden was pressured by party leaders to withdraw because, after his awful performance in the June debate, they feared that not only would he lose but he would hurt the chances of Democrats running for other offices. The switch at the top was unprecedented but was certainly not unconstitutional. The nation’s political parties are not even mentioned in the Constitution. They make their own rules. But facts never get in Trump’s way.

Trump continues to insist that there was a “coup,” and some in the media believe he’s setting up the basis for another violent attempt to restore him to power. His most rabid followers believe whatever he says, and this article by Colby Itkowitz and Hannah Allan in the Washington Post shows that they now believe that Harris’s substitution for Biden was illegitimate, intended to cheat Trump of the Presidency yet again.

The article reminds us that Trump predicted that the election in 2016 was rigged, that the election in 2020 was rigged, and now he’s back to the same bogus claim. The only election results he accepts as valid are his own wins.

They write:

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.

Trump refuses to say whether he will accept the results of the 2024 election, even as he tells his fans that the Democrats are cheating.

In an Aug. 6 post on Truth Social, Trump presented a fantastical story that envisioned Biden, “whose Presidency was Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him,” crashing this week’s Democratic National Convention to take back the nomination.

“They forced him out. It was a coup. We had a coup,” Trump said of Biden at an Aug. 9 rally in Bozeman, Mont. “That was the first coup of the history of our country, and it was very successful.”

This post-election time will be different from January 6, 2021. If Trump calls up his Proud Boys and his other militias, D.C. will be prepared. And Trump will not be in charge.