‘I didn’t win the election’: Trump admits defeat in session with historians
“I didn’t win the election,” he said.
The admission came in a video interview with a panel of historians convened by Julian Zelizer, a Princeton professor and editor of The Presidency of Donald Trump: A First Historical Assessment. The interview was published on Monday by the Atlantic.
Describing his attempts to make South Korea pay more for US military assistance, Trump said Moon Jae-in, the South Korean president, was among the “happiest” world leaders after the 2020 US election put Joe Biden in the White House.
“By not winning the election,” Trump said, “he was the happiest man – I would say, in order, China was – no, Iran was the happiest.
“[Moon] was going to pay $5bn, $5bn a year. But when I didn’t win the election, he had to be the happiest – I would rate, probably, South Korea third- or fourth-happiest.”
What I Learned When Trump Tried to Correct the Record
During our hour together, Trump didn’t have many questions for us. Even in his attempt to correct the record, Trump mostly didn’t acknowledge or engage with informed outside criticisms of his presidency. He did, however, admit to having sometimes retweeted people he shouldn’t have, and at one point he said, “when I didn’t win the election”—phrasing at odds with his false claim that the 2020 vote was stolen.
