According to Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker of the Washington Post, authors of the forthcoming
I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J Trump's Catastrophic Final Year, Giuliani approached senior Trump aides early on election night at the White House.
"What's happening in Michigan?" he asked.
The campaign manager, Bill Stepien, chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and senior adviser Jason Miller told him it was too early to know.
"Just say we won," Giuliani said.
The aides said it was the same in Pennsylvania.
"Just say we won," Giuliani said.
"Giuliani's grand plan," the authors report, "was to just say Trump won, state after state, based on nothing. Stepien, Miller and Meadows thought his argument was both incoherent and irresponsible."
Meadows reportedly responded, angrily: "We can't do that. We can't."
But Trump did.