Election Day 2024 is still 11 weeks away, which might seem like a long while, but early voting in some states will begin in less than a month. Common sense suggests the major party presidential nominees would be laser focused right now on get-out-the-vote strategies and pursuing as many votes as possible. Indeed, it’s how democracies work: The more votes a campaign gets, the greater the chance of success.

With this in mind, it’s curious to see Donald Trump consistently downplay the need for votes as part of his Republican candidacy. NBC News reported:

Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday said his strategy for the fall is less geared toward turning out supporters to vote and more focused on ensuring Democrats “don’t cheat” in the general election. “Our primary focus is not to get out the vote, it is to make sure they don’t cheat,” Trump said in remarks at a campaign event in Asheboro, North Carolina, a state Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign views as competitive this year.

“We have all the votes we’ll need,” Trump added, pointing to yard signs as proof of his popularity. As a video excerpt of his remarks made clear, the former president wasn’t kidding.

I’ve studied campaigns for quite a while, and I honestly can’t think of another example in which a candidate, less than a month before voters start casting ballots in a competitive race, said out loud, “Our primary focus is not to get out the vote.”

If the message sounds familiar, it’s not your imagination. As we discussed roughly a month ago, the GOP candidate peddled the same line on Fox News in late July. “My instruction: We don’t need the votes, I have so many votes,” Trump said.

It wasn’t a mistake. The day after June’s presidential debate, for example, the former president 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.”

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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.”

As best as I can tell, Trump isn’t literally telling Americans not to cast ballots. He’s instead suggesting 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 voter intimidation tactics and voting restrictions. Given the volume and repetition of his anti-election rhetoric — Trump asked earlier this week, “Why are we having an election?” — and after his years long antipathy toward democracy, it’s tough not to find the comments unsettling.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.