CNN host Kaitlan Collins opened CNN’s town hall with Donald Trump on Wednesday by repeatedly pushing the former president and current presidential candidate to admit that he lost the 2020 election.
“Your polls show that you are dominating the Republican race right now, but you’re also under active federal investigation for trying to overturn the 2020 election results,” opened Collins. “Your first term ended with a deadly riot at the capitol, and you still have not publicly acknowledged the 2020 election result. Why should Americans put you back in the White House?”
Trump responded, “I think that when you look at that result and when you look at what happened during that election, unless you’re a very stupid person, you see what happens.”
“That was a rigged election and it’s a shame that we had to go through it. It’s very bad for our country, all over the world they looked at it and they saw exactly what everyone else saw… If you just look recently with the 51 intelligence agents, that made a 16 point difference. If you look at the FBI and Twitter, they call it Twitter files, it made a big difference.”
“Mr. Trump, back to what you just said there, though, it was not a rigged election,” Collins interrupted. “It was not a stolen election. You and your supporters lost more than 60 court cases on the election. It’s been nearly 2 and a half years. Can you publicly acknowledge that you did lose the 2020 election?”
“Let me just go on,” Trump shot back. “They found millions of votes on camera, on government cameras, where they were stuffing ballot boxes. So with all of that I think it’s a shame what happened. I think it’s a very sad thing for our country. I think it’s a very sad thing frankly for the world, because if you look at what’s gone to our country, our country has gone to hell.”
As Trump started to criticize the Biden administration’s economic and foreign policy, Collins said, “Mr. President, we have a lot of questions about the economy and foreign policy tonight, but what you just said there, Republican officials debunked those claims about fraudulent ballots.”
“Who?” Trump asked, to which Collins responded, “Republican officials in Georgia and every single state. Your own election officials, Mr. President.”
Trump then claimed “people were afraid to take on the issue, but we have a big problem in this country. We have elections, we have elections that were horrible.”
“If you look at what happened in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. If you look at what happened in Detroit, Michigan. If you look at what happened in Atlanta. Millions of votes and all you have to do is take a look at government cameras. You’ll see them, people going to 28 different voting booths to vote, to put in seven ballots a piece, and they’re all on camera.”
Collins interrupted, “Mr. President, I have to stop you there because there is no evidence of that. Your own election officials testified to that and have said that.”
CNN’s town hall on Wednesday was the first of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign — as well as his first time on CNN since the 2016 campaign.
Ahead of the event on Wednesday, Trump warned CNN to “treat MAGA, the greatest political movement in our Country’s history, with respect.”
“I think they will, but we will soon find out?” he wrote on Truth Social.
Watch above via CNN.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
