With false ‘coup’ claims, Trump primes supporters to challenge a Harris win

Amid a tight presidential race, Donald Trump has tried to delegitimize Kamala Harris’s nomination and undermine confidence in this year’s election.

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.
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“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.”

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