Former President Donald Trump has said he never admitted defeat in the 2020 presidential election and that he has “not conceded.”
The comments come after the former president on June 16 told Fox News’s Sean Hannity in an interview, in remarks about the presidential race, that “shockingly, we were supposed to win easily at 64 million votes and we got 75 million votes and we didn’t win, but let’s see what happens on that.”
When asked by David Brody, host of Just the News’ “Water Cooler,” in another interview on Monday whether it meant he had admitted defeat, Trump said, “No, I never admitted defeat,” later adding, “the word is concede—I have not conceded.”
“All you have to do is read the newspapers and see what’s coming out now,” Trump said, referring to an audit currently underway in Arizona’s Maricopa County, and recent reports over various election integrity concerns in Georgia’s Fulton County.
“Just take a look at what’s happening, read the papers,” he said. “A lot of the mainstream media—in fact almost all of [them]—refuses to cover it. Why, I don’t know. It’s all Pulitzer Prize material but they refuse to cover it.”
Trump told Brody that he believes evidence will point toward voter fraud in the two states and that “other states are also going to come back with that [assessment].” If the election is determined to be fraudulent, “people are going to have to make a determination as to what’s going to happen,” he added.
When probed, Trump said he would withhold comment on whether he could be potentially reinstated as the U.S. president. “I’m going to just see what happens.”
“If the election was fraudulent, people are gonna have to make up their own minds. It’s not going to be up to me. It’s going to be up to the public. It’s gonna be up to, perhaps, politicians,” he said. “I don’t think there’s ever been a case like this where hundreds of thousands of votes will be found. So we’ll have to see what happens.”
When asked about rumors that he could take the position as Speaker of the House in 2022, Trump responded that while he’s heard them, it isn’t something that he has ever considered.
The former president said that he is currently working to help the Republican Party win more public support in the hopes of securing a majority in the House and Senate, and that the outcome looks favorable, with a large part of it owing to his endorsements. “My endorsements have meant a lot. We’re almost undefeated, hundreds and hundreds of endorsements, people win,” he said.
As for what could impact his decision to potentially run for president in 2024, Trump did not respond directly to the question, saying instead that he is currently observing the situation, for which he commented has left him “very unhappy.”
When asked about former Vice President Mike Pence’s decision to not reject disputed electoral votes and send them back to the state legislatures, Trump said that he was “disappointed” in Pence’s decision.
Pence, who was presiding over the joint congressional session on Jan. 6 where electoral votes were being formally counted, said that day that he believed he didn’t have the power under the U.S. Constitution to make decisions about rejecting or accepting votes even if he had concerns about election integrity.
Trump told Brody that he believes Pence did have the authority to reject the electoral college votes for now-president Joe Biden and send them back to the state legislatures to decide which votes to send to Congress.
“I felt he had the right to send it back, and he should’ve sent it back. That’s my opinion,” Trump said. He noted that various battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona, are “now looking at what happened during that election.”
“I think you would have found that you might very well have a different president right now had he sent them back,” Trump said.
