'We’re counting on this guy': Trump announces who he’ll blame if he loses

29 October 2024

Former President Donald Trump is making it clear that he's banking on the efforts of one man to win a second term, and that it'll be his fault if he comes up short next week.

Axios reported that Trump is keeping a close eye on Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Michael Whatley — who is heading up the RNC's so-called "election integrity" team — as he shoulders the responsibility for delivering a GOP victory on November 5. According to Axios, Whatley's role is part of the ex-president's "if I don't win, they cheated" strategy of how to respond to election results depending on the outcome.

"Where are you, Michael? Stand up," Trump said at a recent rally in North Carolina, where Whatley served as the Tar Heel State's GOP chair prior to leading the RNC this summer. "We're counting on this guy. I didn't take him from any other state. I took him right from here."

"Michael, you better win or you're never going to be able to come back here," Trump continued. "He doesn't win, he won't be at RNC and he will no longer be in North Carolina. He'll be looking for a job."

Earlier this year, the ex-president oversaw a major shake-up at the RNC's headquarters that involved Whatley taking over as chair and his daughter-in-law, Lara (who is married to Eric Trump), becoming the co-chair of the national Republican Party apparatus. After they took over the RNC and replaced former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, a wave of mass layoffs hit the RNC. Nearly all of the layoffs were of employees who weren't on board with Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

With a week to go before Election Day, the GOP is gearing up to dispute any election results in battleground states that are unfavorable to the former president. Lara Trump indicated in an interview earlier this year that the RNC is ready to "strike" at polling places in key cities across the country like Detroit, Michigan, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to challenge election results in real-time.

"We plan on having attorneys in all of these major polling locations across the country," Lara Trump said in May. "We can't wait to litigate something weeks after it has happened. We need to strike at a moment's notice. We want people there on the ready to hit things and hit the ground running when they happen so that we are never seeing 2020 happen ever again."

A core part of the RNC's Election Day strategy is to have its army of poll watchers and poll workers — which numbers around 200,000 — look for any irregularities to seize on in the event Trump loses. How successful that effort will be remains to be seen: The former president filed roughly 60 lawsuits alleging fraudulent activity in swing states he lost in 2020, and lost nearly all of them.

Voter fraud remains a popular go-to scapegoat for Republicans after they lose elections. However, there is zero evidence of voter fraud happening at a significant enough level to swing election results. Earlier this year, the Washington Post found that a smattering of voter fraud investigations in Republican-dominated states like Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Texas yielded only 47 convictions despite tens of millions of ballots cast over the period being investigated.

Click here to read Axios' report in full.

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