It’s a playbook the president’s political machine has run over and over since 2016, and it went into overdrive again in the wake of Monday’s Iowa caucus mess. Trump took to Twitter to bemoan the “unmitigated disaster” that took place in Iowa, while his son Eric charged without evidence that Democrats were “rigging” the contest. Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale called the caucus the “sloppiest train wreck in history,” slyly adding that it “would be natural for people to doubt the fairness of the process.”

The Republican National Committee, meanwhile, sent out an email comparing the caucus to Fyre Fest, the fraudulent 2017 music festival.

“Democrat caucus chaos is manna from heaven for Republicans — an unexpected gift when we needed it most,” said Michael Caputo, who served as an aide on Trump’s 2016 campaign. “Why not step back and watch Democrats Balkanize, maybe even encourage it?”

The Trump team has already spent much of the last several weeks stoking Democratic discord, pushing the idea that the Democratic establishment is working to deny liberal insurgent Bernie Sanders the party’s nomination. Trump propagated the idea that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi initiated the Senate impeachment trial with an eye toward keeping Sanders off the campaign trail in Iowa before the caucuses, a notion that the president’s allies echoed on the airwaves. Trump’s campaign team, meanwhile, highlighted a story about members of the Democratic National Committee discussing a rule change to stop Sanders at the party’s convention.

Now, the president’s backers are claiming Democrats rigged the Iowa results to hurt Sanders, who was widely regarded as the Iowa frontrunner.

The episode bears stark similarities to 2016, when Trump exploited Democratic Party divisions surrounding Sanders during his general election campaign against Hillary Clinton. The president and his aides gleefully highlighted leaked DNC emails which depicted party officials as favoring Clinton over the Vermont senator. Trump came to describe the 2016 Democratic nomination process as “rigged” against Sanders and said the “books” had been “cooked” to hurt Sanders.

As in 2016, Trump backers say they once again see an opportunity to win over supporters of Sanders, a populist outsider — though one who regularly calls Trump “a racist president.”

Jason Miller, a top aide on Trump’s 2016 campaign, said the president could gain traction with Sanders fans if they felt “screwed” by the Democratic nomination process.

“There is a home in President Trump for many Bernie Sanders voters,” said Miller. “Many of those voters will be in play for President come November.”

After a turbulent three years in the White House, the prospect of a drawn-out and bitter Democratic primary fight has thrilled the president’s strategists. While Trump is atop a unified Republican Party that is firmly in his corner, the Democratic nominating process could drag on for months. Though Iowa typically clarifies presidential primaries and winnows the field, the uncertainty surrounding the Democratic contest has only created confusion so far.

“Iowa should be the beginning of the crystallization and because of the way things turned out it had the opposite effect,” said Andy Surabian, a Republican strategist and an adviser to the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr. “There’s a lot less clarity about the field today than there was yesterday.”

There are indications the delay reporting the vote in Iowa has scrambled the Trump team’s calculations. While Trump’s allies have long anticipated facing Joe Biden or Sanders in the general election, several said they were increasingly monitoring billionaire former New York City Mike Bloomberg, who is skipping the early states and barraging the rest with an unprecedented TV ad campaign. Bloomberg announced on Tuesday that he was doubling his TV spending and was hiring additional staffers. The former mayor has already spent nearly hundreds of millions on the airwaves, far more than his Democratic rivals.

With the party conventions still months away and the general election even further off, it is not clear whether the president’s team will try to sustain their message. But some Trump allies see long-term advantages in pushing the notion that the Democratic contest has run aground.

“This is not a very auspicious start for a party who is trying to run a narrative that an incumbent president is inept and corrupt,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump political aide. “Who looks corrupt and inept today as a result of this?”