WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s fruitless calls Thursday morning to “Stop the count” underscored a major problem for the president: He needs some states to keep counting ballots if he has any shot of winning reelection.

Trump was trailing Vice President Joe Biden in Arizona and Nevada when he sent out an all-caps tweet demanding that counting stop, and he needs to catch up in at least one of them to keep Biden from reaching the necessary 270 electoral votes.

In addition, Trump would need to hold on to his shrinking leads in Pennsylvania and Georgia, where Biden is well within striking distance. Trump appeared headed to victory in North Carolina, another battleground state that has not been called.

Trump issued a follow up all-caps tweet falsely claiming that any vote that arrived after Election Day “will not be counted.” Twitter flagged it as misinformation, a frequent occurrence for a president who has leaned heavily on baseless claims of voter fraud.

It’s a tough math problem and a messy public relations problem for Trump, who has bled credibility during his four years in office with contradictory and often false statements.

During the campaign, Trump insisted the outcome needed to be settled on Election Day, Nov. 3, even though most elections require days to count ballots. The challenge grew this year because a record number of Americans, fearful of the COVID-19 pandemic, cast mail-in ballots instead of voting in person.

But as Trump fell behind Biden on election night, and Fox News projected Biden as the winner in Arizona, his advisers unsuccessfully demanded the call be rescinded, and that media organizations should wait until all votes were counted.

The discordant messages put Trump at a disadvantage as he tries to convince voters that he may be the rightful winner of the election.

In the 2000 Florida recount between George W. Bush and Al Gore, Republicans offered a consistent, if contentious, message.

Bush led by several hundred votes, out of more than 6 million cast, in the state that would decide the winner in the Electoral College. His campaign argued in state and federal court that Democratic attempts to find uncounted ballots could lead to an illegal reversal of the election.

Republicans printed out “Sore-Loserman” T-shirts and bumper stickers, mocking the Gore-Lieberman campaign logo as they flooded elections offices and the streets.

The single theme won public support while they fought off legal challenges and eventually prevailed in a divided Supreme Court. The high court stopped the recount, and Bush won the state — and thus the White House — by 537 votes.

Twenty years later, Trump lacks the consistent message to make the public relations case. His supporters banged on windows and chanted, “Stop the count!” outside an election office in Detroit. Hours later, another group of Trump supporters gathered outside an election office in Phoenix, chanting, “Count the vote!”

Trump was similarly out of sync with his own advisers. Even as Trump demanded that counting stop, Kellyanne Conway told Fox News that there was no hurry to declare a winner.

”We can’t wait three hours, three days, three weeks, to get a result?” she said. “What is the rush all of a sudden?”

In his public comments Tuesday night and Wednesday, Biden urged his supporters to “be patient” and wait until all the votes are counted.

Trump has turned to the courts to give himself an edge.

His campaign secured a court order on Thursday allowing the president’s team to more closely observe the processing of ballots in Pennsylvania. Several hundred thousand ballots remain uncounted there, and Trump’s lead has been steadily shrinking.

Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager, denied that the president was in danger of losing.

”We will win Pennsylvania,” he said. “I have as much confidence today as I did yesterday,” when he prematurely declared victory.

Trump’s campaign planned to file another lawsuit Thursday in Nevada, where the race remains too close to call.

Fox News reported that the lawsuit will allege that 10,000 people voted in the state despite not living there.

It’s unclear what evidence, if any, there is for the claim. Trump’s team has repeatedly spread baseless accusations of voter fraud.

The state has six electoral votes, and a Biden win would effectively secure his victory if he holds on to his lead Arizona.

The Associated Press has projected that Biden will win Arizona, but Trump’s team insists the state is still up for grabs as more votes are counted.

(Noah Bierman and Chris Megerian write for the Los Angeles Times.)