Donald Trump just said that he should have never left the White House after losing the presidential race to President Joe Biden four years ago.
Leaning into lies about a stolen 2020 election during a Sunday rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania, the former president told supporters that it was a mistake for him to relinquish the presidency in January 2021.
“I shouldn’t have left,” he said. “I mean honestly, because we did so well.”
Over the past four years, Trump has continued to maintain that the 2020 results were “rigged,” opting to ignore more than 60 court decisions debunking voter fraud claims made by him and his allies.
An October report from the Associated Press found that it is “virtually impossible to pull off a large-scale vote-rigging operation that could tip a presidential race.”
Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election have resulted in real-life discord. On Jan. 6, 2021, a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in hopes of blocking the election from being certified by Congress.
The Republican presidential candidate has already been trying to lay ground for supporters to refuse a potential loss in 2024 as well.
Earlier this week, in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump declared that the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania was “cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before.”
Elsewhere during his Sunday rally speech, Trump also struck a threatening tone toward journalists in the crowd.
While speaking behind panes of bulletproof glass (which was implemented after the assassination attempt on him in Butler, Pennsylvania), he said, “To shoot me, someone would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don’t mind that.”
He also accused news networks CNN and MSNBC of being “crooked as hell.”
“The media is so damn bad,” he said. “It’s unbelievable.”
Bloomberg via Getty Images
Following his remarks, the Trump campaign claimed that his comments were not a threat toward the media but were referring to the two assassination attempts he’s faced.
“In fact, President Trump was stating that the Media was in danger, in that they were protecting him and, therefore, were in great danger themselves, and should have had a glass protective shield, also,” read the statement from the campaign’s communications director, Steven Cheung.
“There can be no other interpretation of what was said,” he added. “He was actually looking out for their welfare, far more than his own!”
