The possible repercussions of a Donald Trump victory have been much debated ahead of the 2024 election . Recently, Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen also issued a chilling warning that “there may be blood” if Trump loses to Kamala Harris and refuses to accept the election results yet again. During an interview with NewsNation’s Dan Abrams, Cohen argued that Harris would win the electoral college and the popular vote by a margin of 5 to 6 million.
As reported by HuffPost , he said, “But I think Trump won’t stop at anything. It will be in the courts, it will be in litigation. And he will be telling people again to ‘go to the Capitol if you want to have a country and fight like hell.’ There may be blood, and I’m concerned.” He added, “If he claims he wins, and they say he doesn’t win, there could be chaos. And Trump will read it and won’t care about the results.” In response, host Abrams echoed that Trump would declare victory, even if he loses.
“[Steve] Bannon came right out of jail and said that’s what he’d tell him…that he should declare victory,” Cohen claimed, as reported by The Daily Beast . Earlier this year, in September, election experts as well as seasoned Republicans claimed that Trump and his allies, who denied past election results, are already preparing certain conspiracy theories about election fraud. John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona, remarked that Trump and his supporters are ready to “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” if Trump loses.
As reported by The Guardian , he added, “They’ll claim everything went wrong if they lose. I’d be surprised if Trump doesn’t try to foment insurrection if he loses the election.” A former Republican and staunch Trump critic, former Michigan congressman, Dave Trott, accused Trump of already inciting concerns about the integrity of the election. Trott claims that Trump might use falsehoods as a backup tactic to undermine democracy in case of another defeat, even though he has no evidence. Trump has repeatedly gone back and forth on acknowledging his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden .
The GOP nominee has made it clear that if he doesn’t win on November 5 , he’ll once again cry fraud, just as he did four years ago. At a rally in Michigan in September, he claimed that a loss would only mean one thing, the Democrats cheated. According to him, that’s the only explanation for defeat, as reported by Reuters . Following his 2020 loss, Trump and his allies pressured Georgia officials to find extra votes, and his supporters infamously stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a failed attempt to block Vice President Mike Pence from certifying Biden’s win.