When Donald Trump looks like he’s gearing up to meddle in an election, still-raw history suggests he should be believed.

He showed yet again Monday he’s obsessing about the midterm elections — two days after a Democratic upset in a reliably Republican state Senate district in Texas offered another ominous sign for the GOP in November.

“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over, we should take over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places.’ The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” Trump said. “We have states that are so crooked, and they’re counting votes. We have states that I won, that show I didn’t win.”

Trump’s warning was one of his most overt efforts yet to create a narrative of suspicion around November’s elections in case the Republican Party does poorly because of his tanking poll numbers. This is a familiar tactic. Trump laid groundwork for his false claims the election was stolen in 2020 months before the first votes were cast in his defeat to Joe Biden.