Former President Donald Trump has publicly acknowledged that he did not win the 2020 presidential election, telling podcaster Lex Fridman that he lost “by a hair.”
Fridman asked the Republican candidate in a podcast episode released Tuesday about his expectations for next week’s debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.
Trump initially responded, “I’ve debated a lot … I’ve done well in debates,” before veering off into a sidetrack about the number of votes he received in 2020, saying, “I ran for president. Then I got millions more votes the second time than I did the first time.”
“I was told if I got 63 million, which I got the first time, ‘You’d win. You can’t not win.’ And I got millions more votes than that and lost by a hair,” Trump added.
Trump received about 74 million votes nationwide in 2020, compared to 81 million for Joe Biden.
His admission is a departure from his usual rhetoric about the 2020 presidential election results, which he often claims were “rigged.”
Trump later expressed doubts about the election in the podcast with Fridman, saying, “I think the election was a fraud. A lot of people thought so too and wanted answers.”
After the 2020 election, Trump and his team spent weeks challenging the election results in swing states like Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Trump faces four federal felony charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. A federal grand jury returned an indictment alleging that Trump knowingly lied about the 2020 election by spreading claims that were “unsubstantiated, objectively unreasonable and constantly changing.” Trump has indicated that his lawyers will enter a plea of not guilty on his behalf during a hearing in the case on Thursday.
In addition, Trump also faces criminal charges in Fulton County, Georgia, for his efforts to overturn the state’s election results.
In the run-up to this year’s presidential election, Republicans have already filed lawsuits in key states, including Michigan, where they are raising the issue of whether Detroit has hired enough GOP poll workers. They are also alleging in North Carolina that the state’s voter rolls allow non-citizens to vote.
Democrats warn that the Republican Party could use these pre-election legal steps to sow doubt if Trump loses the election again.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
