Ohio Republican says Trump may try to ‘steal’ 2024 election if he loses

Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (R-Ohio) on Sunday said former President Trump may try to “steal” the presidential election in 2024 if he ultimately decides to enter the race but ends up losing.

Gonzalez, during a pretaped interview with co-host Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union,” said Trump has evaluated what went wrong on Jan. 6 — when Congress certified the Electoral College vote despite the former president’s requests for the ballots to be rejected — and is now installing loyal personnel at levels of the government to do “exactly what he wants them to do.”

“I think any objective observer would come to this conclusion that he [Trump] has evaluated what went wrong on Jan. 6, why is it that he wasn’t able to steal the election? Who stood in his way? Every single American institution is just run by people. And you need the right people to make the right decision in the most difficult times,” Gonzalez said.

“He’s going systematically through the country and trying to remove those people and install people who are going to do exactly what he wants them to do, who believe the big lie, who go along with anything he says,” he added.

The Ohio Republican, who is not seeking reelection, said he believes Trump’s actions now are “pushing towards one of two outcomes. He either wins legitimately, which he may do, or if he loses again, he’ll just try to steal it, but he’ll try to steal it with his people in those positions.”

“And that’s then the most difficult challenge for our country. You ask yourself the question, did the institutions hold again? Do they hold with a different set of people in place? I hope so, but you can’t guarantee it,” he added.

Gonzalez was one of 10 House Republicans to vote for Trump’s impeachment in January following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

He later announced in September that he would not be running for reelection in 2022.