MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said Wednesday on “The ReidOut” that former President Donald Trump didn’t “think that elections are a real thing.”

Host Joy Reid said, “You have a party that doesn’t believe in winning power through elections. They don’t believe fundamentally in democracy they just believe in having power. That means really there is no limit to what they would be willing to do to get it. They really don’t care whether that means they won an election or not. That’s immaterial to them.”

Maddow said, “Yeah when Trump won the Republican primary in 2016, he said it was rigged. When he won the general election in 2016, he said it was rigged. Before he ran for re-election in 2020 he said it was rigged. When he lost he said it was rigged. He is already saying 2024 is rigged.”

She added, “He doesn’t think that elections are a real thing. He doesn’t think that elections are legitimate, and he doesn’t want an American form of government in which elections decide whether or not he’s in power because he doesn’t believe election results should be binding. And so that’s what it boils down to when you talk about people say democracy is on the ballot, that’s what it is. The nuts and bolts way plays out with what is now a whole Republican Party strategy to say, we’re likely not going to have any election results, and we’re going to have to figure this out some other way. Either with the Republicans in Congress or the Republican-leaning courts, we’ll have them sort this out rather than the American people.”

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