Trump is reportedly 'trying hard to recruit' supporters to his baseless August reinstatement theory

Former President Donald Trump reportedly does genuinely believe he will be reinstated as president this summer, and he's apparently "trying hard" to recruit people to spread the idea.

After The New York Times' Maggie Haberman reported this week that Trump has been telling people he "expects he will get reinstated by August," despite that not being possible after he lost the 2020 presidential election, National Review's Charles C. W. Cooke backed her reporting up.

"I can attest, from speaking to an array of different sources, that Donald Trump does indeed believe quite genuinely that he — along with former senators David Perdue and Martha McSally — will be 'reinstated' to office this summer after 'audits' of the 2020 elections in Arizona, Georgia, and a handful of other states have been completed," Cooke writes.

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Not only that, but Cooke also reports that Trump has been "trying hard to recruit journalists, politicians, and other influential figures to promulgate this belief — not as a fundraising tool or an infantile bit of trolling or a trial balloon, but as a fact."

Haberman previously said on CNN that Trump is "trying to get conservative writers to publish in a more mainstream way that this election was 'stolen' from him." The Washington Post also reported that Trump has told allies he believes he could return to the White House this year, though some advisers said the comments "appear to be just offhand musings." On Friday, Trump's daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, said that "as far as I know, there are no plans for Donald Trump to be in the White House in August."

Conservatives should "understand why this matters," Cooke writes. "The scale of Trump's delusion is quite startling" and represents a "rejection of reality, a rejection of law, and, ultimately, a rejection of the entire system of American government." Read more at National Review.