President Donald Trump returns to the White House from playing golf in Washington, DC on November 7, 2020, after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election.
ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images
President Donald Trump returns to the White House from playing golf in Washington, DC on November 7, 2020, after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election.
ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images
Donald Trump privately admitted defeat after the 2020 election, a new book claims.
At the same time, the former president was publicly claiming victory had been stolen from him.
The House Jan. 6 committee has heard evidence Trump knew his stolen election claims were false.
Donald Trump privately appeared to admit that he had been defeated in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election, according to a new book by The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman.
According to the extracts from “Confidence Man”, published by CNN Monday, the former president seemed to acknowledge his defeat to Joe Biden in the wake of the November 3 election.
Trump asked what had gone wrong, and comforted one aide, saying “we did our best”, Haberman claims. Trump told junior press aides, “I thought we had it,” seemingly almost embarrassed by the outcome.
The remarks stand in contrast to what he said on election night, when in a stunning press conference he claimed victory even as ballots were being counted, alleging a “fraud” was being committed on the American people. After Biden’s victory was announced, Trump refused to concede defeat and falsely claimed victory.
Extracts from the book suggest that at some point Trump’s mood changed and he backed away from privately admitting defeat, refusing to leave the White House.
Trump was reportedly overheard asking the chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, “Why should I leave if they stole it from me?”
The 45th president continued to press his case that victory had been stolen from him, culminating in the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol by a mob of supporters who were seeking to stop Biden’s certification as president.
The sincerity of Trump’s stolen election claims has been one area of focus for the House committee investigating the riot.
Senior aides have testified that they told Trump multiple times he has lost, and a former aide, Alyssa Farah, testified he admitted defeat to her.
The committee argues that Trump knew, or should have known, his election fraud claims were false but continued making them anyway.