You don’t need to be an expert in electoral politics to understand Rule One of any campaign: Candidates should pursue as many votes as possible. In a democracy, it’s common sense: The more votes a campaign has, the greater the chance of success.

With this in mind, Donald Trump appears to have a counterintuitive rhetorical habit. The New Republic noted:

On Fox News Thursday morning, Donald Trump had a weird instruction for his supporters: they don’t have to vote. “My instruction: We don’t need the votes, I have so many votes,” Trump said on Fox & Friends before going on a rant about how much support he has in Florida.

As a clip from the show makes clear, the former president didn’t appear to be kidding.

If the phrasing sounded at all familiar, it’s not your imagination. The day after last month’s presidential debate, for example, Trump held a rally in Virginia and told attendees, “We don’t need votes.”

A week earlier, the Republican spoke at a far-right conference and said roughly the same thing. “I tell my people, I don’t need any votes,” said Trump, who added: “We don’t need the votes.”

That came on heels of the GOP candidate pushing the same line during an appearance in Detroit. “Listen, we don’t need votes,” Trump said. He added: “We don’t need votes. We have to stop — focus, don’t worry about votes.”

In fact, as my MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones noted, the former president has been pushing this line since last fall, during his party’s primary process. “You don’t have to vote,” Trump told a New Hampshire audience in October. “Don’t worry about voting. The voting — we got plenty of votes.”

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At face value, all of this probably seems bizarre. In fact, I’ve never heard a candidate for elected office — in any race, in either party, in any cycle — literally tell the public, “Don’t worry about voting.”

But making matters worse is the message behind the message. Despite the odd phrasing, Trump isn’t literally telling Americans not to cast ballots, he’s instead arguing that he’s so wildly popular, receiving support from voters will be effortless as Election Day nears.

The real challenge, the former president invariably adds, is dealing with cheating and electoral fraud that definitely exist in his weird imagination, despite Trump’s inability to substantiate his conspiracy theories with evidence.

In other words, every time the Republican downplays the need for votes, he’s necessarily emphasizing the need for unnecessary voter intimidation tactics.