Did Donald Trump just make Jack Smith’s job that much easier by admitting that he knows he lost the 2020 election?
During a speech Wednesday in Mint Hill, North Carolina, Trump appeared to give up the game when speaking about his performance four years ago.
“We did much better by the way, in the election of 2020, than we did in 2016,” Trump said.
“Millions and millions of votes more—more votes than any sitting president in the history of our country,” Trump said. This election-denying claim simply isn’t true, because Trump got roughly 74 million votes, while President Joe Biden got 81 million.
“But they beat us by a whisker. They beat us by a little whisker,” Trump said. “He beat us from the basement.”
Of course, it’s important to know that pretty much 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—specifically, in his election interference case in Washington, D.C., where special counsel Smith is seeking to prove that Trump knew he lost the 2020 election but still tried to overturn the results.
Trump has said he lost the 2020 election “by a whisker” before, during an interview earlier this month with podcaster Lex Fridman.
“We had a man in there that should’ve never been in there,” Trump said, speaking about Biden. “They kept him in a basement, they used Covid, they cheated, but they used Covid to cheat. They cheated without Covid too.”
Moments later, the former president claimed he had “lost by a whisker” in 2020. But after his interview, Trump claimed he was just joking.
“I did that sarcastically,” he said. “All you have to do is look at it, and they should have sent it back to the legislatures for approval. I got almost 75 million votes, the most votes any sitting president has ever gotten. I was told if I got 63, which is what I got in 2016, you can’t be beaten.”
Despite the obvious confusion Trump’s little joke caused, the former president has decided that “lost by a whisker” will be part of the hot air he intends to blow on the campaign trail and that its meaning, like everything he says, is whatever suits him.
