By JILL COLVIN

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump has spent months laying the groundwork to challenge the results of the 2024 election if he loses — just as he did four years ago.

At rally after rally, he urges his supporters to pull off a “too big to handle” victory, telling them the only way he can lose is if Democrats cheat. He has repeatedly refused to say whether he will accept the results, regardless of the outcome. And he claimed the deception was already underway, citing untrue claims or outrageous theories with no basis in reality.

“The only thing that can stop us is deception. It’s the only thing that can stop us,” he said at an event in Arizona late Thursday night.

Former Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump arrives at a campaign rally at Macomb Community College, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024, in Warren, Mich. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson) In 2020, Trump prematurely declared victory for the House White. He launched a legal and political effort to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden, which culminated in his supporters storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Democrats fear they could do the same this year before the race is called. He did not respond to a question Friday in Dearborn, Mich., about those Democratic concerns, but to attack Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump has put election lies at the center of his 2024 campaign, issuing heated warnings about fraud while vowing to take punishment against those he sees as standing in his way.

This year, he is backed by a sophisticated “election integrity” operation built by his campaign and the Republican National Committee, which has already filed more than 130 lawsuits and enlisted more than 230,000 volunteers who are being trained to act as observers and election workers across the country. country on election day.

Here’s a look at Trump’s strategy to sow doubt in this year’s election and the facts behind each claim.

The vote of non-citizens

THE CLAIM: Trump claimed, without evidence, that Democrats allowed millions of immigrants to enter the country illegally so they could be registered to vote. In an interview with Newsmax in September, Trump claimed that such efforts were already underway.

“They are working overtime trying to sign people up, illegally, to vote in elections,” he claimed. “They are working overtime to sign people in and register people — many of the same people you just see crossing the border. What is probably their initial thought, because why else would they want to destroy our country?”

FACTS: It takes years for newcomers to become citizens, and only citizens can legally vote in federal elections. Isolated cases of non-citizens caught trying to vote — such as a University of Michigan student in China arrested for allegedly voting illegally — do not reflect a larger conspiracy.

Research has shown that non-citizens who register and vote illegally are extremely rare and usually done by mistake.

Overseas ballots

THE CLAIM: Trump pointed to Democratic efforts to secure the votes of Americans living abroad as another opportunity for fraud. He claimed they were “preparing to cheat!” and “want to “dilute the TRUE vote of our beautiful military and their families”.

THE FACTS: The former president campaigned for the overseas American vote himself, promising to end so-called “double taxation” for people who often pay taxes in their country of residence as well as the US government.

Ominous warnings

THE CLAIM: Trump began to suggest that Harris might have access to some sort of secret inside information about the outcome of a race that has yet to be decided.

As the vice president took a day off from the trail to sit in on interviews with Telemundo and NBC, he repeatedly suggested, “Maybe she knows something we don’t.”

In Michigan last weekend, he suggested Harris wouldn’t be campaigning with Beyoncé — one of the biggest stars in the world — if the race really was as close as polls suggest.

“Number one, they cheat like hell. So maybe they know something we don’t, right? he said. “They might know something we don’t, I don’t know. Why the hell celebrate when you’re down? Maybe – I never thought about it – maybe she knows something we don’t. But we won’t let it happen.”

THE FACTS: There is no evidence to support a Democratic conspiracy. Indeed, Trump raised fears about his own planning at a rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden when he looked at House Speaker Mike Johnson and talked about a “little secret” they had.

Johnson, before becoming speaker, took the lead in crafting a widely criticized brief that seeks to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss and echoed some of the wilder conspiracy theories to explain his loss.

Asked about Trump’s reference to a “little secret,” Johnson issued a statement that included the following: “By definition, a secret shouldn’t be shared — and I’m not going to share this one.” (He later told an audience that he was referring to “one of our get-out-the-vote tactics,” according to The Hill. Trump’s campaign issued a statement noting that he had “done countless televised rallies” to help to strengthen the Republican Congress.)

Returning to Pennsylvania

THE CLAIM: In recent days, Trump has turned his anger on Pennsylvania, a state that both campaigns see as critical and where they say cheating is already underway.

Earlier this week, he claimed that York County, Pennsylvania, had “received THOUSANDS of potentially FRAUDULENT Voter Registration Forms and Mail-in Vote Requests from a third-party group.” He also pointed to Lancaster County, which he claimed was “caught with 2,600 fake ballots and forms, all written by the same person. “Very bad ‘stuff’.”

During a campaign event in Allentown on Tuesday, the former president said, “They’ve already started cheating in Lancaster. They cheated. I got them with 2,600 votes. No, I got them cold. 2,600 votes. Think about it, think about it. And every vote was written by the same person.”

THE FACTS: In Lancaster, District Attorney Heather Adams, an elected Republican, said election workers raised concerns about two sets of voter registration applications because of what she described as numerous similarities. Officials are now reviewing a total of about 2,500 forms.