It’s another example of the “hits keep coming” from former President Donald Trump, whose recent interview with new host Kristen Welker for Meet the Press continues to provide fodder both for the mainstream media and the various prosecutions that currently dog the former president as he seeks to recapture his political success from 2016, only this time in 2024.
During Trump’s recent hour-and-a-half interview with Welker the forty-fifth president, who infamously challenged the results of the 2020 Presidential Election until inauguration day, admitted that he did not, in fact, believe that the election was stolen—despite that which he was telling the media and having his legal team argue in courtrooms across American.
While the former president is entitled to freedom of speech, there are limits to those rights. That is especially the case if Trump is found responsible for having orchestrated the January 6 riot, as he is currently accused of doing.
What’s more, the admission that he did not actually believe his own claims about the 2020 election being stolen will harm Trump in his ongoing Georgia trial over charges that the forty-fifth president attempted to unduly influence the vote count in the Peach State during the 2020 election.
Donald Trump Self-Destructs
You see, a possible viable legal defense for Trump in both the federal case about his alleged involvement in the January 6 riot as well as the Georgia election case could have been for him to claim he truly believed the election of 2020 was stolen.
Now, however, Trump has kneecapped his own legal defense.
Further, Trump merely admitted what his former longtime adviser, Cassidy Hutchinson, testified under oath to the January 6 Committee in Congress last year. According to Hutchinson, who was a close confidant of Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows as well as the former president, Trump admitted to her that he believed he’d lost the election.
It was only after the reality that Trump had been defeated by Joe Biden—a man who Trump painted in public as “sleepy” and cognitively impaired—that Trump changed his mind. At least that was what Hutchinson claimed. Although it was under oath, Trump never confirmed these details.
Most defendants know it is always best to keep their mouths shut.
Yet, Trump cannot help himself. Thus, in a testy exchange with Meet the Press’ Kristen Welker, Trump appeared to confirm that which Hutchinson had testified to the previous year.
Trump has a long history of being completely unable to control himself while on camera. The Meet the Press interview was no different.
Whether the public believes it or not, Trump’s admission on camera will be used against him in one—or both—of the cases he’s currently dealing with involving his pernicious election-denying behavior following the 2020 Presidential Election. The former president is obsessed with winning the 2024 Presidential Election at all costs and he believes the 91 felony counts that he’s been charged with since March will propel him to the White House.
In fact, these charges are likely to lead to his undoing, and will probably ensure that he cannot hold office, even if he were to win the 2024 Election.
Donald Trump Can’t Shut Up
And Trump has no one to blame but himself. He did not need to go to NBC to do such a freewheeling interview. Nor did Trump have to reveal that which many of us always suspected—that he didn’t believe his own rhetoric about the 2020 election having been stolen by “Sleepy” Joe.
It was all to protect his wounded ego and create the momentum he thought he needed to sustain public interest in his desire to run for president again in 2024.
Trump is a fool. He’s just given his prosecutors more ammunition with which to destroy him. Trump is unlikely to be qualified to hold office again, under the Fourteenth Amendment. Finally, Trump just incriminated himself.
Isn’t it time we all moved on from this clown show?
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert occasionally serves as a Subject Matter Expert for various organizations, including the Department of Defense. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
