Trump Saw 2020 Election Results as an Obstacle, Not an Outcome

Three days before the 2020 election, one of former President Donald Trump’s closest advisers told a private gathering of his supporters that, no matter what happened on Election Day, the president was going to say he had won.

“He’s going to declare victory,” said the adviser, according to a new court filing by the special counsel investigating Trump’s efforts to hold onto power after that election.

“That doesn’t mean he’s the winner. He’s just going to say he’s the winner,” said the adviser, whose name is redacted but who appears from other details to be Stephen Bannon.

The filing was a step in the effort by the special counsel, Jack Smith, to prove that Trump is not immune from prosecution for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

But, one month before Trump is on the ballot again, it also offered new details that paint a chilling picture of the way the former president and current candidate seems to think about elections: as an exercise in which the vote total is entirely beside the point. In his world, adverse election results were an obstacle, not an outcome.

“It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election,” Trump told family members at one point, according to the filing. “You still have to fight like hell.”