I can almost guarantee you that by Nov. 2, the Trump campaign already had their "stolen election" talking points ready, because they knew that there would be a huge blue shift after the election, especially in Pennsylvania. I suspect they saw that there were very few paths to victory, and blanketing all forms of media with alarm over Biden votes "coming out of nowhere" was the best strategy to prime the public for a flurry of lawsuits.
Trump was only 43K votes away from winning legitimately, I'm pretty sure that they thought they were gonna win on Nov. 2, especially since they went to states that voted for Biden like Michigan or Minnesota, and thought they had Arizona and Georgia locked.