Trump repeats polls claims in interviews, is unchallenged

NEW YORK: In the first television interviews of his post-presidency, Donald Trump repeated his false claims that the election was stolen from him 10 times – each instance unprompted and unchallenged.

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

Each network actively appeals to Trump’s base conservative audience. And the way the interviews were conducted illustrates how difficult it may be to change the minds of supporters who believe the expresident’s unfounded narrative.

Nearly a month after he left office, Trump drove his point home on each network:

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

“We did win the election, as far as I’m concerned. It was disgraceful what happened,” he said to Greg Kelly on Newsmax.

“You would have had riots going all over the place if that happened to a Democrat,” he said when interviewed by Harris Faulkner and Bill Hemmer on Fox News Channel.

At no point did an interviewer interrupt Trump to correct or challenge the claims. He brought up the election grievances six times with Kelly, twice with Pellegrino and twice with the Fox team.

No interviewer introduced the topic. Except for Kelly, each questioner stuck to the subject of Trump’s relationship with Limbaugh.

“We probably have 100 questions for you, but so many of these are not appropriate for this venue, so we’ll keep it on this topic for now,” Hemmer said.

Hemmer arguably teased the subject when he asked Trump if he had spoken to Limbaugh post-polls.

“Rush thought we won and so do I,” Trump said. — AP