Trump reveals plan to stop “cheating” in key 2024 swing state

Former President Donald Trump has falsely claimed that he “won” Nevada in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, while revealing that he has a plan to stop the “cheating” in 2024.

President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won their respective Nevada elections by very similar margins of victory over Trump, around 2 percent. Regardless, Trump baselessly asserted that he won both elections “by a lot” in a new interview published by The Nevada Globe on Monday.

Nevada is considered one of the top battleground states in the 2024 election. Trump said that it was “a state that is disgraceful” after being confronted with the fact that he lost twice, before claiming that Democrats used the COVID-19 pandemic to “cheat” in 2020 and announcing that his 2024 campaign had a team in place to defeat any further alleged cheating.

“We have great people working now,” Trump said. “We have great lawyers working. They used COVID to cheat the last time. They used COVID to cheat. But, we think we have a great team in place to stop it.”

Trump claimed that his campaign’s 2020 election lawsuit was “conclusive” in proving that he got “robbed” in the last election, arguing that the judge in the case “didn’t want to see” the suit.

“You know, we sued on the basis of … they robbed the vote at a level,” said Trump. “We had a lawsuit that was so good and the judge didn’t want to see it. He didn’t even want to see it. We had a lawsuit that was, in my opinion, conclusive.”

The lawsuit filed in 2020, Law v. Whitmer, ended with Nevada District Judge James Russell ruling against the Trump campaign after finding that there was “no credible or reliable evidence that the 2020 General Election in Nevada was affected by fraud.”

Russell allowed the Trump campaign to present its evidence in the case, determining that the campaign’s evidence consisted of expert testimony of “little to no value” and witness declarations that lacked credibility and were deemed to be “hearsay.”

The Trump campaign appealed the decision, prompting the Nevada Supreme Court to affirm Russell’s decision in a 6-0 ruling that noted there had been no improper “admission or rejection of evidence by the district court.”

Newsweek has reached out to the office of Trump via email for comment.

The Trump interview published on Monday also featured the ex-president taking shots at former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who was a staunch supporter of Trump’s election fraud claims in 2020.

Laxalt was also endorsed by Trump in the 2022 Nevada U.S. Senate race, which he lost to incumbent Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto. He has recently fallen out of favor with Trump after backing his chief rival in the 2024 election, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

“Laxalt was a very weak candidate,” Trump said in the Globe interview. “He was pathetic. You know, I helped Laxalt do the best he could. I guess his grandfather was strong. His father was good. But, I guess the chain got weaker and weaker. But, Adam Laxalt is a stiff and he didn’t do the job.”

“Adam was not a good attorney and didn’t do a good job,” he added. “I thought he was actually a terrible attorney and he didn’t do a good job. He wasn’t able to do anything with the litigation, but this is a state we did very well in.”

Despite previously boosting Trump’s claims of having won the Silver State in 2020, Laxalt tweeted on Friday that “no Republican presidential candidate has won in Nevada since 2004,” while touting the candidacy of DeSantis.