(Headline USA) In the first television interviews of his post-presidency, Donald Trump repeated that the election was stolen from him.
Trump emerged this week for interviews with Fox News Channel, Newsmax and One America News Network tied to the death of Rush Limbaugh.
Nearly a month after he left office, Trump drove his point home on each network:
— “The election was stolen,” he told OANN’s White House correspondent Jenn Pellegrino. “We were robbed. It was a rigged election.”
— “We did win the election, as far as I’m concerned. It was disgraceful what happened,” he said to Greg Kelly on Newsmax.
In response, Kelly referred to “President Trump” and “Joe Biden.”
“A lot of people are in awe of you, and I am one of those people,” Kelly told Trump.
— “You would have had riots going all over the place if that happened to a Democrat,” he said when interviewed by Harris Faulkner and Bill Hemmer on Fox News Channel.
The subject didn’t come up in a later interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity.
Hemmer asked Trump if he had spoken to Limbaugh post-election.
“Rush thought we won, and so do I,” Trump said.
So, in fact, do many of his supporters. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll taken between Jan. 28 and Feb. 1 found that 65% of Republicans say that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected president last November.
When Trump supporter Mike Lindell, CEO of My Pillow, started making election fraud claims in a Newsmax interview on Feb. 2, anchor Bob Sellers interrupted him to read a statement saying that “election results in every state were certified and Newsmax accepts the results as legitimate and final. The courts have also accepted that view.”
When Lindell pressed his claims, Sellers walked off the set.
But a day later, Sellers apologized, saying “there is no question I could have handled the end of the interview differently.”
Asked about the exchange, Newsmax spokesman Brian Peterson said, “while we believe the former president is entitled to his own opinion on the matter, Newsmax has accepted the election result as final and legal.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.
