He has definitely has made it clear that he intends to try a judiciary coup. I'd say that he will eventually test it. Just saying the quiet part out loud has some kind of specific purpose in his mind. In a democracy, coups occur with consent of the governed. I don’t mean that 100% of the people consent, but the consent of their constituencies who support them - the consent of the faction. It’s the consent of the faction that is driving the Republican assault on democracy. In much the same way that ‘reasonable’ Republicans assumed that they could control Trump and use him for their purposes ended up being devoured by Trumpism, the same is going to be true of the voters.
But the court will not just blindly hand him the election if he doesn’t have the votes. If they do you can call that the day democracy officially dies in America. I think the end game of appointing a new judge to the court as quickly as possible is not keeping Trump as President at all cost but to have a conservative packed Supreme Court as his and the Republican senates legacy.
Let’s say Election Day comes and goes and Biden appears to have won. But wait: the Trump Admin files a lawsuit in Pennsylvania, asking that all mail-in ballots be thrown out, because…reasons. What are the chances that that suit is decided by a federal appeals court judge appointed by Trump? Would that judge be required to recuse his/herself?
Repeat for Arizona, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina. Trump & McConnell have rammed through an ungodly number of federal judges…it seems like the odds would be pretty good.