In the wake of Trump's 2020 defeat and following these midterms, Trump has placed himself in an interesting predicament, rhetorically, on what's become his trademark issue: election denial.
--On the one hand, the Republican Party did well overall. These results may have not met their highest expectations, but they did retake the U.S. House, won some governorships and other key Senate races, and it appears the GOP won the national popular vote as well. Trump wants to take credit for some of this: he recently bragged about the "popular vote" for perhaps the first time ever. And since this election gave them something, there isn't a huge appetite among the GOP at large to endorse wild "voter fraud" accusations, not this time anyway.
--On the other hand, quite a few Trump-handpicked candidates *did* lose. Not all of them (see: J.D. Vance in Ohio), but many of them. This dismal record of candidate selection reflects poorly on Trump, so he wants to give *some* rhetorical cover out there, but historically speaking, Trump also loves dumping "losers" at the earliest opportunity and scapegoating all the blame onto them.
--And a final factor is that Trump's "voter fraud" lie is a kind of jealously-guarded talisman that he is apt to keep close to the chest. It's a special privilege, to be deployed only at the pleasure of Il Duce, shared with very few others.
So, it looks like Trump is going all-in on the "voter fraud" lie for just one of his defeated acolytes, Kari Lake, and in just one state: Arizona. It makes sense, as she's consistently been one of the most impassioned wingnuts on this issue. And as a former reporter, she plays well on TV. Something Mr. "Apprentice" himself jibes with.
So, Trump has weirdly found his way into a moderate(?) voter fraud position: putting out just enough to fan the flames, and to keep the issue in play for the hardcore MAGA base, should Trump find a need to reach for it again in the future.
All that aside: Yes. Trump asking for a losing governor to be "installed" is a shocking breach of democratic norms: the kind of thing you'd expect the CIA to orchestrate in some Latin American country 80 years ago. And yet, Trump, out of power and semi-exiled in Mar-a-Lago, is plainly toothless to make something like that happen, and as a result, it all looks silly to any rational American.
