“Right up to Monday’s Electoral College vote, President Trump held the false hope that Republican-controlled state legislatures would replace electors with allies who’d overturn Joe Biden’s win, two people who discussed the matter with him told Axios. Through the past week, the sources said, the president browbeat GOP legislators in multiple states, launched tirades against Republican Govs. Doug Ducey of Arizona and Brian Kemp of Georgia, vowed to make Fox News ‘pay’ for accurately calling the race, and tested ways to say he didn’t win without acknowledging he had lost. One source who talked to Trump over the weekend said the president continued to insist that there was significant fraud in multiple states, paraphrasing him: ‘Do you think if the legislatures know this is all true, they would just act to overturn this?'”

“Sources who’ve spoken to Trump in the past few days said he’s reluctant to talk much about a 2024 run. That’s because ‘it’s an acknowledgement of the end,’ said one source who spoke to Trump at length in recent days. ‘He’ll say, ‘Yeah, I’ll probably do it. I may do it.” Another source said that Trump seems depressed at the realization that his backers have given up on 2020: ‘He’s saying, ‘We won these states, we won those states,” and adding that what he took away from conversations with his pollster John McLaughlin was that if he could get as many votes as he did, he also must have won. The closest Trump has come privately to admitting where this is heading, the source added, is to say, ‘If we don’t win, I don’t say lose. I say I don’t win'” – Axios.