Donald Trump Donald John TrumpOmar fires back at Trump over rally remarks: 'This is my country' Pelosi: Trump hurrying to fill SCOTUS seat so he can repeal ObamaCare Trump mocks Biden appearance, mask use ahead of first debate MORE and his campaign are pushing the idea that President Obama may have won North Carolina in 2008 thanks to non-citizens voting.

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Their source is a 2014 opinion blog post published on the Washington Post’s website by Old Dominion University professors Jesse Richman and David Earnest, which Trump quoted from at a rally Monday night.

Boris Epshteyn, a senior adviser to Trump, repeated the refrain in an interview Tuesday with CNN, falsely claiming that the Post “reported” that Obama may have won the state in an article “that just came out a few days ago.”

“The Washington Post reported that Barack Obama Barack Hussein ObamaMichelle Obama and Jennifer Lopez exchange Ginsburg memories Pence defends Trump's 'obligation' to nominate new Supreme Court justice The militia menace MORE may have won in 2008 North Carolina due to illegal voting,” Epshteyn said, prompting a skeptical reaction from CNN host Jake Tapper.

At a rally in Green Bay, Wis. Monday night, Trump quoted a passage from the article: "It is possible that non-citizen's votes were responsible for Obama's 2008 victory in North Carolina."

The 2014 blog post and accompanying peer-reviewed study was based on a dataset from an online poll.

Both the post and the study were widely disputed. An editorial note accompanying the article on the Post's website links to three others posts pushing back on Richman and Earnest’s theories.

“Subsequently, another peer-reviewed article argued that the findings reported in this post (and affiliated article) were biased and that the authors’ data do not provide evidence of non-citizen voting in U.S. elections,” reads the editorial note.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment about whether the candidate believes Obama won North Carolina due to illegal voting.