Story highlights Donald Trump and his surrogates are citing the 2000 election

The analogy doesn't necessarily match the accusation of widespread voter fraud in 2016

(CNN) Donald Trump offered a glib assurance Thursday that he would respect the general election outcome, saying he would abide by the results -- dramatic pause -- "if I win."

The Republican presidential nominee's top aides and surrogates, including daughter Ivanka Trump, running mate Mike Pence and campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, have been less cryptic, stating clearly that the Republican ticket would accept the final decision.

But the campaign, in an attempt to normalize Trump's unfounded claims of a "rigged vote" and "large scale voter fraud," has begun to peddle an odd and misleading rationalization -- comparing Trump's promise during the debate to keep the country "in suspense" on Election Day and possibly after with the protracted 2000 recount fight.

"Donald Trump has said, over time, if you take all his statements together, he has said that he will accept the results of the election," Conway told CNN's Chris Cuomo on "New Day," "but everybody, including Al Gore in 2000, waits to see what those election results are. You wait to see what the results are -- if they're verified, if they're certified."

But that comparison, as CNN Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger put it later Thursday, "is like an apple to an elephant. They are two completely different things."

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