Pop quiz time: If Kamala Harris wins the election in November, will Donald Trump a) graciously accept he lost, concede the race, and congratulate Harris on running a great campaign, or b) refuse to admit he lost, insist the election was stolen from him, and fire off a series of increasingly insane posts on Truth Social, in addition to exhibiting other unhinged behavior? If you went with “b,” congratulations, you haven’t magically forgotten the events of the last nearly four years. Also, you have the same expectations as at least one former Trump official.

In an interview with CNN, former national security adviser John Bolton told Kaitlan Collins, “We know one thing for sure: Trump never loses. And so if he’s not declared the winner of 2024, as in 2020, it must be because he was treated unfairly yet again; it was stolen yet again.” He added: “I don’t think he knows exactly what his theory is gonna be this time to explain how he was denied winning the election, so he’s trotting out a number of things. And I think this is why people need to start thinking more now about how to deny Trump the ability, the day after the election, if he loses, to try and throw the process into chaos again.”

Of course, it’s not just Trump’s actions regarding the last election that suggest he’ll try to contest the upcoming one should he lose, but also the many ways he has recently appeared to be laying the groundwork to once again object to the results. Those would include:

• Falsely accusing Harris of being a “CHEATER” and engaging in “ELECTION INTERFERENCE”
• Claiming Biden’s replacement on the Democratic ticket was an effort to “steal” the election from him
• Calling Harris’s elevation a “scam” and “unconstitutional”
• Telling supporters Democrats are going to try to “rig the presidential election”
• Having his daughter-in-law installed at the RNC, which in the past several months has claimed there was “massive fraud” in the last election* and warned of “cheating” in the next one
• Refusing, on numerous occasions, to commit to accepting the election results

So yeah, you don’t have to take Bolton’s word for it; you can just take Trump’s.

*There isn’t actually any evidence of this.