- Trump is increasingly fixated on overturning the election result, advisors told The Washington Post.
- Telling Trump he lost is like "p---ing into the wind," one advisor told The Post.
- Trump is avidly following the audit in
Arizona and has held talks about others, the paper reported.
Former President
Despite a failure to prove in US courts that election fraud occurred, Trump has become more and more obsessed with efforts to disprove President Joe Biden's victory and won't listen to dissenting advice, The Post reported.
The Post reported that nearly all the 2020 campaign advisors who'd spoken with the paper said they regarded his fixation on litigating the election as a waste of time. But he keeps returning to the topic, they said.
When advisors leave challenging the 2020 election out of their drafts for his speeches, he goes off script, ad-libbing about the count in various states, The Post reported.
The New York Times' Maggie Haberman suggested earlier this week that Trump believes he could be "reinstated" by August.
The idea that Trump can be reinstated is a conspiracy theory based on the false premise that Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election, Insider's Grace Panetta and Jake Lahut reported.
But Trump has been energized by the election audit in Maricopa County, Arizona, and is trying to work out how to secure similar efforts in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and Georgia, advisors told The Post.
Trump recently met with Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano at Trump Tower to talk about an audit in the state, The Post reported.
Prominent Trump supporters and conspiracy theorists such as MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and Sidney Powell have also spread the unfounded claim that Trump could be reinstated.
The Office of Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.