Trump gets renewed attention for acknowledging he lost 2020 election

Liberal media outlets are highlighting a months-old interview in which former President Donald Trump acknowledged that he did not win the 2020 election and repeated his familiar claims that the contest was “rigged.”

Mr. Trump’s comments came in a video interview last summer convened by Princeton University professor Julian Zelizer, editor of “The Presidency of Donald Trump: A First Historical Assessment.” The interview was published Monday by The Atlantic and publicized by other liberal outlets.

During a lengthy monologue with the historians about his administration’s achievements, Mr. Trump recited his conversations with South Korean President Moon Jae-in about paying for U.S. defense systems.

“We had a deal,” Mr. Trump said. “What happened, all set, and then when the election was rigged and lost, what happened is that the deal went away. When I didn’t win the election, he [Mr. Moon] had to be the happiest … I would say, in order, China was — no, Iran was the happiest. I would rate, probably, South Korea third- or fourth-happiest.”

Mr. Trump is still pursuing his claims that officials in various swing states broke rules and cheated, stealing the election from him. At a rally in Michigan last week, he said: “The presidential election was rigged and stolen, and because of that our country is being destroyed. We did win. We did win. … We won by a lot, not just a little.”

Mr. Zelizer wrote in The Atlantic that Mr. Trump “was the one who had decided to reach out to a group of professional historians so that we produced ‘an accurate book.’” He said Mr. Trump “seemed to want the approval of historians, without any understanding of how historians gather evidence or render judgments.”

Shortly after the interview, Mr. Trump announced that he would stop granting interviews to book authors.

“It seems to me that meeting with authors of the ridiculous number of books being written about my very successful administration, or me, is a total waste of time,” Mr. Trump said in July 2021. “These writers are often bad people who write whatever comes to their mind or fits their agenda. It has nothing to do with facts or reality.”