US President Donald Trump, in an interview with Fox News, said that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin doubts the legitimacy of the 2020 US election, saying it was “rigged”. The statement comes after their summit in Alaska ended abruptly.
‘Your election was rigged’
“Vladimir Putin said something – one of the most interesting things. He said, ‘Your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting’,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News.
The US President added, “He said, ‘Mail-in voting, every election – no country has mail-in voting. It’s impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections.’ And he said that to me. It was very interesting because we talked about 2020. He said, ‘You won that election by so much and that’s how he got it.’”
“He said, and if you would have won, we wouldn’t have had a war. You’d have all these millions of people alive now instead of dead,” Trump claimed, establishing his image of a peacemaker. On the eve of his meeting with Putin, he claimed that he resolved six wars in the last six months, adding that he is “very proud of it”.
He went on to say, “And he said, and you lost it because of mail-in voting. It was a rigged election, but a mail-in voting.”
Voter fraud – a claim Trump has made since 2020
In May this year, he was speaking at the White House Kennedy Centre board meeting, where he claimed that the 2020 election was “rigged” by Democrats, without giving any proof. He added that if the election had been fair, he’d already be retired and doing something he loved. However, the election fraud forced him to continue the fight.
Before his inauguration for the second time, Trump held a rally where he repeated his rhetoric on voter fraud, lamenting what could have happened differently if the 2020 election hadn’t been rigged.
“Under our administration, Russia respected America, just like every other country respected America, but now Joe Biden is seen as weak,” Trump told the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2022.
He further said, “As everyone understands, this horrific disaster would never have happened if our election had not been rigged and if I were the president.”
During his campaign in 2020 for the November elections, he hinted in his social media posts, interviews and speeches that he might not accept the outcome of the election if the result wasn’t, sort of, in his favour. Back then, he claimed, that if he lost the election, it would be because it was “rigged”.
Not just this, he also criticised the mail-in voting throughout his campaign. “We’ll see what happens…Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very peaceful time; there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation,” he had said.
Before the election results were out in November 2020, which Joe Biden won, Trump said in a press conference, “This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.”
However, Trump has yet to give any proof of voter fraud.