Combative Trump refuses to accept election defeat, mocks sexual abuse victim

AFP | Goffstown                                                                  

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

A combative Donald Trump made a rare live appearance on CNN on Wednesday, repeating his false claims about the 2020 election, hurling insults and mocking a former magazine columnist he was found liable of sexually abusing and defaming.

Trump, during a one-hour “town hall” on the cable television network that he regularly denounced as “fake news” while in the White House, took questions on a broad range of subjects including the war in Ukraine, the debt limit, immigration and his multiple legal challenges.

“Most people understand that what happened was a rigged election,” Trump said of his 2020 presidential election defeat by Democrat Joe Biden. If re-elected, he said he would pardon a “large portion” of the hundreds of Trump supporters who have been jailed for their roles in the January 6, 2021 storming of the US Capitol.

The frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination declined to unreservedly commit to accepting the results of the next White House vote when pressed by CNN anchor Kaitlin Collins, the mediator for the event held before a friendly Republican audience.

“If I think it’s an honest election, absolutely I would,” Trump said. The former president also waded into the tense negotiations between the Biden White House and Congress over raising the US debt limit, urging Republican legislators not to do so if Democrats don’t agree to spending cuts.

“I say that the Republicans out there congressmen, senators, if they don’t give you massive cuts, you’re gonna have to do a default,” Trump said, before quickly adding that he sees such a scenario as unlikely.