Former President Donald Trump admitted in a video that was filmed last July that he lost the 2020 election. The video was published by The Atlantic on Monday.
The admission occurred as Trump participated in an interview with a panel of historians assembled by Julian Zelizer, who is a professor at Princeton and the author of The Presidency of Donald Trump: A First Historical Assessment.
“I didn’t win the election,” Trump said before adding, “the election was rigged and lost.”
He went on to talk about which world leaders were the happiest when he lost the election, naming South Korean President Moon Jae-In.
“[Moon] was going to pay $5 billion, $5 billion a year [for U.S. military assistance],” Trump said. “But when I didn’t win the election, he had to be the happiest – I would rate, probably, South Korea third- or fourth-happiest.”
The discussion also covered what he believed were the most important accomplishments of his administration including trade relations with foreign countries.
Trump reached out to Zelizer to produce an “accurate book” about his presidency. He said that the July interview would be the final interview he ever gave for a book about his administration.
“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,” Trump said last July.
“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,” the statement added.
Trump has suggested that he might run for the White House again in 2024 but has not made a formal announcement.
