Donald Trump on Wednesday, has said he won the 2020 US presidential election.
Trump, who stated this during a rare live appearance on longtime adversary CNN hurled insults and mocked a former magazine columnist he was found liable of sexually abusing and defaming.
Trump, during a one-hour “town hall” on the cable television network that he regularly denounced as “fake news” while in the White House, took questions on a broad range of subjects including the war in Ukraine, the debt limit, immigration and his multiple legal challenges.
“Most people understand that what happened was a rigged election,” Trump said of his 2020 presidential election defeat by Democrat Joe Biden.
If reelected, he said he would pardon a “large portion” of the hundreds of Trump supporters who have been jailed for their roles in the January 6, 2021 storming of the US Capitol.
“They were there with love in their heart,” the 76-year-old Trump said of the rioters who attempted to block the congressional certification of Biden’s win.
Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, refused to unreservedly commit to accepting the results of the next White House vote when pressed by CNN anchor Kaitlin Collins, the mediator for the event.
“If I think it’s an honest election, absolutely I would,” Trump said.
The former president also waded into the tense negotiations between the Biden White House and Congress over raising the US debt limit, urging Republican legislators not to do so if Democrats don’t agree to spending cuts.
