Oh there he goes again with the lying and weak ego etc, only sometimes it's strategic, and you have to pay attention to all of it to see if you can figure out how it furthers the Republican cause.
So when Trump talks about millions of illegal votes, let's play Jeopardy.
Trump Paranoia for $1000, Alex.
"It's the idea behind millions of forged ballots."
What is massive new voter suppression?
Correct! We also would have accepted the destruction of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Winning the White House and both houses of Congress give the Republicans a lot of new ways to disenfranchise voters. They don't even have to convince anyone that there was massive voter fraud, but if you have the chance, why not. It makes the voter suppression go down easier, for the people whose votes are not being suppressed (i.e. reliable Republican votes).
And no, they're not going to try to keep people in California from voting. This is strictly for pivotal purple and purpleish states like Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Ohio. Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa, that are sometimes red and sometimes blue. The goal is to make them permanently red, and give the Repubs control of the White House basically forever, the same way they gerrymandered their way into control of the House.
It's the opposite of the Hanlon's razor rule that says "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." With the Repubs, you should always look for the malice. It's there, and it's usually not very hard to find. In this case, they're setting us up for massive disenfranchisement and a Republican lock on the White House.
People used to say George W. Bush is stupid, but I always thought he was smart. Same thing with Trump. No way someone gets to where he is and is stupid. He's plotting and scheming, and has lots of experience and has a sense of which bets are worth taking. So when he says something that appears random, it's safer to assume that it's not.
For background I recommend this episode of the Slate daily podcast. It's an interview with Bruce Ackerman, a professor of constitutional law at Yale. It's depressing for sure, but you should hear what he thinks is happening.
Also enlightening is this Fresh Air podcast from last summer laying out how the Repubs were suppressing the vote for the Nov 8 election. This clearly played a role in the Trump win.