Trump continued: "I believe—I don’t believe; I know the election was rigged. Biden didn’t get 80 million votes. And he didn’t beat Barack Hussein Obama with the Black vote in the swing states—only in the swing states; it’s interesting. We have lots of other things. I mean, we have so much information, from the 51 agents—that was so crooked—to the laptop from hell, to all of these different things. So it would be easier as you say that to just let you go on. But I’m a very honest person — and I believe it with all my heart, and I believe it with fact—you know, more important than heart. I believe it with fact. And it was a bad four years for this country. This country has been beaten up. We had a president that truly didn’t have it."
Asked how he could have thought it would work to run again in 2024, Trump said: "So, I’m a very positive thinker. I was questioning whether or not I would want to come back, but I never thought that I wouldn’t be able to.... I thought that maybe I wouldn’t do it, but I thought if I did do it, I’d win. But I never considered it a comeback. A lot of people call it a comeback. Most people, I guess, call it the greatest political comeback in history. I think that’s an honor, but I don’t view it as a comeback. I just sort of view it as: I just keep trudging along."
Is that how it looks from his perspective? He's just a man who keeps trudging along!
Posts
71 comments:
Yeah Baby! The Bad Orange Man was elected to three terms--but he'll only serve two. Maybe he's correct--maybe he's not.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” — G B Shaw
Perseverance.
did Hillary ever stop claiming the Russians had stolen the election for Trump, has Stacey Abrams ever really conceded
Don’t call it a comeback, I’ve been here for years
There's an old saying about the democrats, "If it's not close they can't cheat." The only wonder is with such a record of failure of their projects, why it is often that close.
Trump concedes nothing, ever. Not a minor point in a routine debate, not an entire presidential election. Never concede.
I'm sure he wonders why any politician would ever concede anything. To him, everyone else is weird, not him.
Also worth noting, while the establishment Left will concede election defeats, they will never concede that anything needs to move rightward as a result. They never have. Even the historic 1994 GOP takeover of Congress. They spent the next two years arguing that 'voters didn't know what they were voting for.' (Yes, there's been talk of the need for Dems to move right. That will fade as the midterms near.)
So, the establishment Left (politicians, academics, media) have never conceded real defeat. Maybe Trump noticed that.
"I’m a very honest person" A very honest bulls****er. The best kind.
Trump doesn't trudge along, he bulls forward. Trudging is for oxen.
Is it a baby or a fetus? The preponderance of evidence offers probable cause to believe the former. The same with the 2020 election.
it took them four years to remove gingrich, in favor of a more malleable tool, like hastert
Democrats did what they could to fix the election in the swing states. Some of it was outright fraud. Some was diddling with rules and procedures.
I don't know what to think about the "80 million votes" claims of either side. Make mail-in voting open to all and mail out ballots to voters even when they don't ask for him and you'll have to count a lot more votes. Real? Fake? The point is you don't know if they're real or fake. The other point is you will get many more votes than in previous elections whether organized fraud is involved or not.
I do believe there was extensive and most importantly targeted fraud. According to polling, the lies about the laptop alone changed election. That's a terrible thing for my country, but in the end it was a blessing I don't how they do it, but the left always manages to get the opposite result of their efforts. The market today is back up where it was before the tariffs so that attack is in the garbage too. I feel sorry for my Trump hating friends. They just can't catch a break, and they are noticeably depressed and angry. Yes, even more than usual. There is nothing I can do to help them.
There were scores of stories written about the anomalous nature of the 2020 election. The list of anomalies, when laid alongside in comparison to other national elections, stands out in strong contrast. But these stories somehow did not break into the mainstream, which is itself an anomaly.
The Progressive Media (D) don't seem to understand the nature of their irrelevance. When you've proven yourself to be untrustworthy, it doesn't matter whether it's due to incompetence or deceit. It just matters that you've proven to be wrong. Keep doing it, and people just decide you're going to be wrong, so there's no reason to continue paying attention.
They stole it. They stopped counting in the middle of the night, in five different places. They have never explained why. They are Democrats. It isn't possible to hate them enough.
The election was stolen. The fact that the MSM and democrats fought like hell to stop any audit of the votes showed that. If they thought they'd won fair and square, they would've said "Lets audit the votes and it'll show we won and put to rest any doubts".
Instead, they tried to disbar and sue any lawyer who helped Trump, and charged him with a crime in GA when Trump asked the sec of state to audit the votes.
But then the D's are crooked and proud of it. "Just win, baby, just win" is their motto. Or as Harry Reid once said "Sure, I lied. But it worked, didn't it?"
I think that when Trump says that he is "honest", he means that he is open. Which is true. The guy invites the press to his cabinet meetings.
This is infuriating. Biden is ruining all of Donnie’s well thought out plans!
The media have no problem selling the Russia Russia lies - but don't your DARE even THINK that the 2020 election was rigged.
Like it does, the truth will come out when it no longer matters.
"Instead, they tried to disbar and sue any lawyer who helped Trump, and charged him with a crime in GA when Trump asked the sec of state to audit the votes." Yes, and they are still hounding John Eastman, and they still have corrupt SOS's in every blue state, padding the voter rolls and pushing vote-by-mail. The motherfuckers haven't given up, they are still planning to destroy this country.
Biden pardoned 6 family members - 11th hour.
THE SOVIET-DEMOCRATIC MEDIA HAVE NOTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT.
They hate him, attempted to cancel him, Planned to abort him, but his election and ratification is proof through it all that Trump is still viable and evolving. Love or lust wins?
Did Goldberg ask him about his boob job?
Why do they bother asking, Waht difference at this point does it make to them? They still demand affirmation of their theft. The dupers' delight...
Then limited autopsies allowed in AZ and WI determined there were votes unexplained in their origin that should have been thrown out, enough of them to overturn the results in those states. What a mystery...
...If you had to argue you were going to steal a Presidential election and get away with it what would your strategy look like? My strategy would look like everything Democrats made a priority leading up to that election...
Like it does, the truth will come out when it no longer matters.
Yah, they didn't realize it just isn't as fun when you can'y brag about it. That is why they keep asking Trump about it...
with consent decrees from the likes of kemp and ducey,
the dominion card was ready to be played by the front line documentary just the previous month
Man, it’s too bad that not a single judge got to rule on this matter. I bet if our courts got involved, they would support the argument that was made with no supporting evidence.
Wait til someone tells Alex Jones about this……..
judge totenberg, had reasons to be skeptical, but the appeals court shut her down, it wasn't ripe
Is that how it looks from his perspective? He's just a man who keeps trudging along!
Trudging? Just how gullible are you Althouse? He learned. He adapted. He fought. He won.
There was something hinky about the 2020 Presidential Election: look at the Bellwether Counties results and the popular vote totals.
https://x.com/1983Level3/status/1896680728257282331
Despite the denials and ridicule there is considerable evidence of both irregularities and dishonesty in the 2020 elections. Denial and/or ridicule are the usual responses by Democrats and the leftmediaswine when their dishonesty or incompetence is discovered. Think, e.g., Rather/Bush, Clinton/Lewinsky, Biden/dementia, Hunter/laptop.
Who audited the Dominion software?
The questions a coder asks boil down to "what do you want the results to look like."
Would they have been severely disappointed if it was a woman who had elected to amend her body after removing her breasts for reason of a medical diagnosis, at the expense of inclusivity in the body positivity cult?
He knows the 2020 election was rigged, yet neither he nor any other entities have ever been able to produce proof of said claimed rigging. (I think it's possible Trump rigged the 2024 election--given the minuscule 1.5% difference between the popular votes for Trump and Harris, and in some states where Dem candidates for local or state offices won, Trump won, which seems somewhat odd, but I won't and can't assert certainty, as I do not have the evidence to certify my suspicion. It Trump had the proof, he would certainly have published it to the world.
Trump is as he has always been: a liar and fraud.
Teabaghag, Courts may find I lack standing to bring a complaint about the government’s failure to secure the borders and enforce immigration law, but that doesn’t change the fact that millions of illegal aliens have been allowed to remain in the country. Similarly, cases about voter irregularities dismissed for lack of standing don’t mean or prove those irregularities didn’t occur. A case dismissed due to lack of standing doesn’t negate the truth that those things happened.
Jupiter said...
"I think that when Trump says that he is "honest", he means that he is open. Which is true. The guy invites the press to his cabinet meetings."
He does what I do only on a grander scale. Speak the truth in such a way as not to believed. You make fools of people and get to walk through life with a clear conscience.
Cooke. If Harris was so popular what happened to those ten million more Democrat voters that voted for Biden? Where'd they go?
“There were scores of stories written about the anomalous nature of the 2020 election. The list of anomalies, when laid alongside in comparison to other national elections, stands out in strong contrast. But these stories somehow did not break into the mainstream, which is itself an anomaly.”
In 2020, we were assured that the Dominion vote counting machines couldn’t have been connected to the Internet, and, thus the totals couldn’t be adjusted remotely. Turns out, last week, that we found out that not only could the Dominion machines be connected to the Internet - they had been. And the FBI knows this now too. And Trump’s Senate confirmed AAG for Civil Rights was one of his most successful election attorneys last year.
The evidence that 2020 election was rigged is just as clear as that Biden was mentally and physically incapacitated even before taking office.
By now the truth about Biden’s is widely acknowledged but the truth about 2020 election is still protected by the media. Perhaps this is the reason they keep desperately pressing everyone to accept their version of 2020 election results.
So the shoe must be on the other foot, really. The media must admit that 2020 election was rigged, just like they finally admitted Biden’s decrepitude.
Stop chortling our stones, T.B. Haggis!
Like it does, the truth will come out when it no longer matters.
This is why I speculated in the other thread about a "novel legal theory" that because Trump actually won in 2020, even though he didn't serve, he is not eligible to be president now because 2021 to 2025 should have been his second term. Sooner or later, if Democrats don't succeed in stymying him on all fronts, they may decide that it does matter now - and just as they did with the Biden-to-Harris hot swap*, they may decide now it's the time for the truth to come out. Sometimes the truth can be made to serve the purposes of the devil. So to speak.
* Though now, when it no longer matters, we learn from the very mouths of the people who did it that Harris was never supposed to be the un-nominated "nominee" - but was instead Biden's last thumb in the eye to Obama et alia.
Lefties on the thread, you still haven't addressed the post-election polls showing that if the Hunter Biden laptop story hadn't been actively suppressed at the behest of Democrat leadership, it would have swayed something like 17% of voters. You also haven't addressed the many changes in voting procedures that weakened or eliminated election safeguards, often running afoul of state constitutions, particularly in swing states. All you ever talk about is, "There's no proof of massive voter fraud!" (which wasn't necessary, as Biden won the election by some 40,000 votes in a handful of places, not nationwide) and, "Trump lost in court everywhere!" (despite the fact that in the courts where he did lose, which wasn't all of them, he lost because of procedural decisions by the judges, not because anyone weighed the evidence). Oh, or, "Nobody cares about Hunter's dick pics!" (which of course was not ever the story).
All this said - it's turned out to be a great boon that Biden (or, you know, whoever) served that term. All of us Americans have learned so much, Trump himself included.
"The media must admit that 2020 election was rigged, just like they finally admitted Biden’s decrepitude."
So, first you have to find out what is happening. Then you have to browbeat the "journalists" into confessing that they knowingly and intentionally lied about it. Why bother? They are liars. The things they say are lies. RFK has remarked, that Rupert Murdoch encouraged him to produce a story about vaccine issues, but would not air the story, because so much of Fox's income is from Pharma. They are owned. They report what their owners tell them to report.
LOL
There wasn’t enough there to compel the court to even consider the cases, therefore that proves that the fraud occurred. Also that damn illegal immigration is a huge problem and helps make me a winner in any argument where I don’t have a leg to stand on.
- MAGA Legal Argument
Most recently, the WHCA is telling us they were fooled into believing Biden was mentally capable to run a second term. How many here believe them? If you don't believe them, will you concede here and now that the media was fooled by Biden and his White House?
It is logically possible for there to have been both massive fraud and Trump losing the election. After all, if there is fraud, but the fraud is not caught and the votes nullified, the election results will stand. It's like a football game where the winning play should have been nullified by the refs, but wasn't.
The level of willful ignorance among the commenters on this issue is astonishing. It is also astonishing that Professor Althouse continues to ignore the underlying facts:
1. Trump lost 63 of 64 suits claiming wrongdoing. Thirty of those suits were lost on the merits--that is, because Trump failed to offer proof, or in some cases, even allegations, of fraud. Trump voluntarily dismissed a bunch of others, usually a sign of lack of proof.
2. Local and state election officials in the swing states, from county registrars to secretaries of state, many of them Trump supporters, investigated and found no evidence of fraud. Multiple recounts and audits, conducted both before and after January 6, confirmed Biden's win.
3. State legislatures in the swing states, who had standing to raise many of the legal claims that were dismissed for lack of standing, uniformly declined to raise those claims or to appoint new slates of electors. In a number of cases, Republican legislative leaders said that they had no basis for doing so.
4. State governors in the swing states, again including Trump supporters, certified the Biden electors.
5. These basic conclusions were also supported by Federal executive branch officials appointed by Trump, including his AG, his Justice Department, and his Department of Homeland Security.
6. Both Houses of Congress refused to back the charges of wrongdoing and recognized the legitimacy of the outcome. So did Vice President Mike Pence. When Pence refused to overturn the election outcomes, Trump told him, "Mike, you are too honest."
7. Many, many Republican campaign lawyers told Trump that they could not prove fraud--and in some cases, that they could not lawfully plead it---and that he had lost the election. Lawyers for the White House and from the Justice Department told him the same thing.
8. So where was the provable fraud or illegality and how did it escape the investigations of Trump's hundreds of lawyers and of every single institution of government, many of them Trump or Republican controlled?
9. Looking at Trump's claim that he honestly knows he won, one has to ask: how does he know it? One possibility is that he is delusional. Another is that he has evidence which would justify a non delusional person in claiming such knowledge, even in the face of the contrary conclusion of every government actor at both the federal and state levels, including many many of his supporters. The fact that Trump--and many of the commenters here--routinely refuse even to acknowledge these facts, let alone to explain in any detail how the theft could have occurred without detection across multiple states, is a powerful marker of willful ignorance--a classic form of dishonesty and bad faith.
They stopped counting in the middle of the night, in five different places.
They didn't stop counting. They stopped providing updated vote totals. And then, miraculously, had Biden in the lead when they updated three hours later.
Stephen said blah, blah, blah.
Yo, Steve. Until you can explain why five swing states stopped updating vote totals - all at the exact, same time - sent poll watchers home, resumed counting and then had Biden in the lead three hours later, your entire list is full of shit.
You know it. We know it.
If you hadn't stolen the damn thing, Trump would now be an image in your rearview mirror. Instead, you've got the next four years of him kicking your asses.
Which is fine by me. You've earned it.
@Stephen, "...The level of willful ignorance among the commenters..."
Do you at least agree on the importance of free & fair elections? That is, elections that are fully auditable, where procedures are followed to the letter of the law, where regulations are honored, and where investigation is not stymied or obstructed? Do you at least admit there were scores of troubling exceptions to those principles in 2020, in multiple battlegrounds? And that the existence of those exceptions - which include destruction of evidence contrary to voting regulations - and the inability to reliably audit results, have largely fueled the skepticism?
Jim,
First of all, the simultaneous pause in five states did not happen. See, https://www.reuters.com/article/world/fact-check-list-of-partly-false-statements-on-the-2020-election-idUSKBN27Q2N6/; https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/11/04/fact-check-no-vote-counting-democrat-led-states-hasnt-stopped/6163978002/
Second, if it had, you would still need proof, for at least several different states, of how the simultaneous pause contributed to a decisive number of legal Trump votes not being counted and/or phony Biden votes being counted.
And you would run up against the fact that no such proof was presented in post election litigation or at any time since, for any of the swing states.
So you are left having to answer the question of why you should believe the steal claim in the face of repeated findings by both Republicans and Democrats that it is baseless.
Can we all just admit that Trump is a terribly sore loser, who cries fraud to save face. We should also admit that anything he says, will be repeated as the absolute gospel built his very devoted and quite gullible followers?
Aggie, Of course free and fair elections are important. And of course the law should be followed, and people claiming illegality should be given due process. At the same time, part of the relevant law is that election outcomes are not to be set aside by courts lightly. Challengers have to prove both wrongdoing and effect on the outcome. In this case, state and federal officials of both parties found no outcome determinative wrongdoing. Trump had hundreds of lawyers investigating, and was not able to show such wrongdoing in any state.
Now I'd like to ask you a question. If the shoe were on the other foot, and it was a Democratic candidate who was claiming fraud after losing 63 lawsuits and after having his claims rejected by every relevant state and federal actor, including Democratic judicial appointees and strong Democratic supporters of the candidate, what credence would you give to the Democratic candidate's claim that he or she honestly knew that he or she had won?
I got this one! If 63 cases had proved I was completely and utterly full of shit, I wouldn’t keep doubling down, proudly flouting my stupidity as a badge of honor. What kind of shameless moron would take that position?
Aggie, come on... you do realize 51 intelligence officers signed a letter telling you that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian Disinformation. 51! How many intelligence officer will it take for you to believe that Hunter Biden's laptop is a Russian operation?
Not the same case, Leland. Fifty one former intelligence officers, most of them Democrats, acting on the basis of very partial information without hearing at all from the other side. Here, in contrast, these were 63 independent courts, and Trump's lawyers were able to present their best allegations and evidence in them. Plus, Trump had the chance to lobby state election officials, state governors, and state legislatures, not to mention his own Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security, the House, the Senate and Mike Pence. He couldn't persuade any of them to take his side. Post election investigations haven't produced anything either--indeed the chief Wisconsin investigator was disbarred for misconduct.
LIke Jim's answer this is basically dodging the question: what is the evidence that proves the steal, and if it is so compelling, why hasn't it persuaded any of the relevant institutional actors, including those who strongly supported Trump?
So, um, was there actually anything of substance on the laptop proving Joe Biden committed a crime? If there was, then prosecute!
Do you realize that a crackhead banging whores and bragging about his connections, doesn’t constitute proof of a crime?
His modesty is so immodest that it works. "Just li'l ole me trudging along." Hah!
He lost all his cases. And guess what, if we had 5 democrats on the SCOTUS Trump would lose 100 percent of his cases.
How many injuctions did the district judges issue against Biden's executive orders in 4 fucking years? Now, tell me how many these district judges issued against Trump in 100 days.
In Nazi Germany Jews lost all their cases. In Stalinist Russia, the Bourgoise lost all their case. In 21st America, Republicans lose every case when the Judge is a leftist.
@Stephen, you'll find it difficult to believe maybe, but if Republicans had captured civic institutions in a similar way and were ignoring things like signature verification across entire precincts, having laid the ground work to ensure widespread absentee voting with lack of identity controls, I'd be just as hopping mad. I don't like seeing elections gamed, and then when disputed, seeing audits and other verification measures stonewalled - and I'm not happy right now, seeing a Republican led Congress frittering its time away without passing serious and permanent election reforms, that are well within their remit and capability. And if such measures were to be gamed by the Democrat filibustering opposition, then turn the heat up on asking 'Why?' Paper ballots, no machines, inked fingers. No action means it can happen again - and it will.
...And 51 Intelligence Officers, most of them still retaining security clearances at the time, signed that letter knowing that it was a lie, at the time. Knowing that it was a lie, and purely serving partisan purposes.
TeaBagHag said...
“So, um, was there actually anything of substance on the laptop proving Joe Biden committed a crime? If there was, then prosecute! Do you realize that a crackhead banging whores and bragging about his connections, doesn’t constitute proof of a crime?”
The laptop primarily implicated Hunter Biden in crimes related to his 2018 gun purchase by providing evidence of his drug use, leading to his 2024 conviction.
R. Ocean: I understand you to claim that Trump lost because of Democratic judges, just as Jews lost in Nazi courts and Stalin's courts condemned those who were deemed disloyal in show trials. That's a complete non starter: apart from the fact that Trump had an army of able lawyers representing him, and that the record evidence and the decisions of the courts who ruled against Trump is publicly available, the whole point is that the judges who ruled against Trump in every case but one were not all leftists. Many were Republican, even Trump appointees. Many of the other officials and agencies, at both the state and federal level, who rejected his claims were Republican and/or Trump supporting, including his fellow candidate Mike Pence. How did all those Republicans miss a multi state fraud sufficient to turn the election? You've got some explaining to do.
Aggie, Several thoughts. First, you don't really answer my question, which is what would you think of a Democrat who continued to insist that they *knew* they had won after they had had literally dozens of opportunities to prove that claim, and every court and decisionmaker, including those controlled by Democrats, had concluded otherwise. I am still interested in your answer to that question.
Instead of answering that question you pivot to a version of R.Ocean's point. But as a matter of fact it isn't true that Democrats had "captured the civic institutions" that made, interpreted and enforced election laws in the swing states where Trump claimed the election was stolen, let alone the mechanisms for enforcing federal law, which were almost entirely Republican controlled. Republicans controlled both Houses of the State legislature in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Those legislatures controlled the laws, and they also, had they believed it lawful and proper to do so, could have challenged the election outcomes. Also, in states like Arizona and Georgia, the governor was Republican, and in Georgia so was the Secretary of State, while in WIsconsin the election board was non partisan. The state Supreme Courts in Arizona and Georgia were solidly Republican, while in Wisconsin, the conservatives held a controlling majority. So how, exactly, did Democrats game the results in the many swing states and swing state institutions which they did not control?
And if your complaint is that audits and investigations were stonewalled, what do you make of the numerous recounts and audits that happened before the election, and the further fact that when the Republican legislatures in Arizona and Wisconsin actually conducted post election fraud investigations, those investigations ultimately turned up nothing?
It is a wholly different question whether on a going forward basis state mail in ballot laws are a bad idea because they permit too much fraud to fly under the radar. It makes theoretical sense that such systems are easier to game than in person voting, but the historical evidence from swing states like Arizona, which have used mail in voting for a long time, suggests that risk remains small. More fundamentally, the constitution confers many of the decisions about the design of elections to the states themselves, and in particular to state legislatures. If you are a conservative, as you seem to be, aren't you committed to federalist values, or are you only for federalism when it protects conservative states from liberal control?
The biggest proof that the 2020 election was stolen, was how terrified the Dems were that Trump would run in 2024.
The 100+ felony prosecutions in 2024 was a blatant attempt to steal the 2024 election, via lawfare. Colorado even tried to remove him from the ballot. Yes, they are thieves. Yes, they stole an election.
For you paywall jumpers, it's worth a click. That's a very funny interview. Goldberg says he wants to be "fair and balanced."
And Trump says, "I've heard that before."
Very enjoyable interview. Well done!
St. Croix, The Democrats obviously deeply feared Trump in 2024--he remained a strong candidate and his announced program had become more extreme. It does not follow that he did not lose in 2020.
Jamie,
Whatever suppression of the Biden laptop story occurred stands in the same relationship to the 2020 election as the media coverage of Hilary's emails and the Russian theft and leakage of internal Democratic documents do to the results of the 2016 election. Potential unfairness, yes, but not grounds for setting aside an election in multiple states based on claims of a big steal.
Your suggestion that the Trump was doomed not to find proof of his claims, despite the many thousands of Republican federal, state and party officials and lawyers on the case, ignores the fact that motivated Republican state legislatures conducting extended investigations in 2021 were unable to find anything either. Apparently, there was nothing to discover.
As for the statistical claims, if you haven't seen any responses to them then you haven't actually been paying attention. Many of those claims were actually made in the post election litigations, and they were uniformly debunked and rejected there, as Trump well knew. There has been a lot of academic statistical analysis since. A great example is here: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2103619118
The bottom line--none of those claims would get a passing grade in even the most basic statistics course. Let me know if you'd like to discuss further.
I agree that Trump simplified--that is one of his gifts. But he also falsified, and under the normal standards for assessing willful blindness, that falsification was knowing.
"Knowing that it was a lie, and purely serving partisan purposes."
Yeah. A lot of that going around. Knowing liars knowingly telling lies.
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