Donald J. Trump’s strategy against Joseph R. Biden is coming into sharper focus each day.

He wants to sow seeds of doubt and fear in the very election system that produced the Greatest Electoral Fluke of All Time in 2016.

He says if Biden wins it will be because the 2020 election will be “rigged.” There you have it, ladies and gentlemen of each county in America. Your work isn’t worth a damn, according to Donald Trump.

These folks all swear an oath to protect and defend the same Constitution that the president swore an oath to protect. They do so at the local election level. They are county clerks and their deputies. They work diligently to ensure free, fair and secure elections.

Trump says a Biden victory — which I consider a blessed event — will be tainted by whom or what? He doesn’t say. Just that it’ll be “rigged.” Recall he said the same thing in 2016 in advance of that election, suggesting that Hillary Clinton was seeking to rig the result. She wasn’t. The result turned into one of the biggest Electoral College shockers in any of our lifetimes.

Trump has ripped another page out of that same playbook by suggesting Joe Biden is seeking to rig an election. In truth, as I see it, Trump is the one who is seeking to rig it. He wants to suppress voter turnout by suppressing mail-in balloting. Intelligence officials already have warned that Russians are working to interfere in the 2020 race just as they did in 2016; they want Trump to win. Why? Trump won’t speak ill of his pal Vladimir Putin.

Donald Trump is trading on fear and loathing in a time when the nation needs unity, comity and a search for common ground. Trump won’t acknowledge what it painfully obvious, that Americans are continuing to die from the COVID crisis. Why is that? Because of Trump’s incompetence. It’s as crystal clear as that.

Trump is mounting a major diversion in seeking to cast doubt on the electoral process that is unfolding.

He is a disgrace.