Donald Trump Stokes Fears Of Another Jan. 6

Donald Trump is telling supporters he already has November’s election in the bag and that the only way he can lose is if the Democrats “cheat,” raising alarms about the prospect of another Jan. 6-like event fueled by election subversion.

“Our primary focus is not to get out the vote. It’s to make sure they don’t cheat. Because we have all the votes we need,” Trump claimed Wednesday at a rally in the battleground state of Arizona, whose electoral results he sought to toss out in 2020 based on false claims of widespread fraud.

If the thought of another insurrection sounds alarmist, consider what happened four years ago. Months before the 2020 election, Trump warned that it would be “ rigged .” In December, days after the Electoral College cast its ballots for Democrat Joe Biden, Trump announced a “wild” protest on Jan. 6, and his allies launched the “Stop the Steal” movement, promoting false claims and conspiracy theories asserting the election was stolen by means of rigged voting machines and fraudulent ballot-stuffing.

Washington officials and law enforcement will be on high alert this time around, so another deadly riot breaking out at the U.S. Capitol doesn’t seem likely. But that doesn’t mean the threat of more violence is zero.

Trump and his GOP allies have been preemptively blaming an election loss on undocumented immigrants — and suggesting the only thing that can stop them from throwing the election to Democrats is new legislation restricting noncitizen voting, even though it’s already illegal and rarely happens, and even though there is no chance of such legislation becoming law.

“There is currently an unprecedented and a clear and present danger to the integrity of our election system, and that is the