Donald Trump’s latest rally in North Carolina was initially set to focus on manufacturing and job creation, but the Republican candidate, as expected, deviated from his script.
Some curious comments were made about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election:
“We did a much better job, by the way, in the 2020 election than we did in 2016. Don’t forget that. Millions and millions more votes — more votes than any sitting president in the history of our country. But they beat us by a hair. They beat us by a tiny hair. He beat us from the bottom up.”
For the record, his assessment was unusually accurate. In 2016, the Republican ticket received about 63 million votes, or about 46% of the vote. Four years later, amid higher turnout, Trump finished with more than 74 million votes — which would have been great, if Joe Biden hadn’t finished with more than 81 million votes.
Yet it appears this was no joke, as a video clip of the GOP candidate’s comments shows.
And that’s what makes this story so strange.
About a month ago, Trump appeared at a far-right event in Washington, D.C., and said, referring to Joe Biden, “He beat us by a whisker. It was horrible.” Five days later, the former president said essentially the same thing, telling a podcaster that he “lost by a whisker” in 2020.
As virtually anyone familiar with American politics knows, Trump campaigned relentlessly against his 2020 defeat, desperately trying to convince the public that he had secretly won the race he had actually lost. The former president lied about this so often and so virulently that it has become known as the Republicans’ “big lie.”
All of which made it strange when he started telling people — out loud and in public — that he had lost to Biden “by a hair.”
This came up during the recent presidential debate, when ABC News’ David Muir reminded Trump of his “by a whisker” rhetoric. The GOP candidate immediately pushed back.
“I said that sarcastically,” Trump responded. “You know. They said, ‘Oh, we lost by a hair.’ They said that sarcastically.”
The response was a no-brainer. The former president has long struggled with the question of what “sarcasm” actually means, and it didn’t help. The videos of Trump’s public remarks made it clear that he was not, in fact, being sarcastic.
And now he’s said the same thing again, without a trace of sarcasm or intended humor.
As for the potential legal relevance, The New Republic noted: “Of course, it’s important to note that virtually every time Trump opens his mouth, his words are admissible in court. So admitting that he didn’t win the election could potentially hurt the former president in court — particularly in his election interference case in Washington, D.C., where special counsel [Jack] Smith is trying to prove that Trump knew he lost the 2020 election but tried to overturn the results anyway.”
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
