Donald Trump repeats electoral conspiracies in series of interviews

In the first television interviews of his post-presidency, Donald Trump repeated his false claims that the elections were stolen from him 10 times, each of them spontaneous and unopposed.

Trump emerged this week for interviews with Fox News Channel, Newsmax and One America News Network related to the death of Rush Limbaugh.

Each network actively attracts Trump’s grassroots conservative audience.

And the way the interviews were conducted illustrates how difficult it can be to change the opinion of supporters who believe the former president’s unfounded narrative.

Almost a month after he left office, Trump emphasized his point on each network:

– “The election was stolen,” he told OANN White House correspondent Jenn Pellegrino. “We were robbed. It was a rigged election.”

– “We won the election, as far as I’m concerned. It was a shame what happened,” he told Greg Kelly on Newsmax.

– “He would have had riots everywhere if that happened to a Democrat,” he said when Harris Faulkner and Bill Hemmer interviewed him on Fox News Channel.

At no point did an interviewer interrupt Trump to correct or question the claims. He raised the election complaints six times with Kelly, twice with Pellegrino and two with the Fox team. No interviewer raised the issue. With the exception of Kelly, every interrogator strictly stuck to the issue of Trump’s relationship with Limbaugh.

“We probably have 100 questions for you, but many of them are not appropriate for this place, so we will keep you on this topic for now,” Hemmer said. However, Hemmer arguably scoffed at the issue when he asked Trump if he had spoken to Limbaugh after the election. “Rush thought we had won, and so did I,” Trump said.

In fact, so do many of his followers. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted between January 28 and February 1 found that 65 percent of Republicans say Joe Biden was not legitimately elected president last November.

When Trump supporter Mike Lindell, CEO of My Pillow, began making claims of voter fraud in a Newsmax interview on February 2, host Bob Sellers interrupted him to read a statement saying that “the results of the elections Elections in all states were certified and Newsmax accepts the results as legitimate and final. The courts have also accepted that opinion. “

When Lindell insisted on his claims, Sellers left the set. But a day later, Sellers apologized, saying “there is no question that he could have handled the end of the interview differently.”

Kelly did not read any statement on certified election results after Trump’s claims. When asked about the exchange, Newsmax spokesman Brian Peterson said that “while we believe the former president has the right to have his own opinion on the matter, Newsmax has accepted the election result as final and legal.”

On Fox News alone, Trump was even called an “ex-president” on the air during his appearances. Kelly referred to “President Trump” and “Joe Biden.”

“A lot of people are in awe of you, and I’m one of those people,” Kelly told Trump.

The television ratings of last week’s impeachment trial clearly indicate the extent to which Trump supporters are resisting news that shakes their worldview. Trump fans weren’t very keen on the trial, anyway, but during day two coverage of impeachment managers’ argument to convict Trump, the Fox News Channel audience was just 815,000, he said. the Nielsen company. The next day, when Trump’s attorneys offered their defense, Fox’s audience more than doubled to 2.21 million, Nielsen said.

CNN and MSNBC, which attract more liberal audiences, also had differences, but not to that extent. MSNBC had 3 million viewers for the second day of trial and 2.67 million for the Trump defense. CNN’s audience went from 2.87 million to 2.54 million.

Utah Republican Senator Mitt Romney, in a statement this week explaining his vote in favor of Trump’s conviction, spoke about the need for Americans to accept the truth.

“There is a falsehood that divides that nation today like no other,” he said. It is that the election was stolen, that there was a massive conspiracy, more secret and widespread than any in the history of mankind, so brilliant in execution that no evidence of it and no observer can be found among the tens of thousands in our agencies of intelligence. I’ll talk about it. “Now, after impeachment, everyone must affirm Biden’s choice, he said.

“The division in America will only begin to heal in light of this truth,” Romney said.