Trump says it was his decision to describe the 2020 election as ‘rigged’

Former President Donald Trump said Sunday that he didn’t respect lawyers and members of his campaign who told him he lost the 2020 presidential election, and that it was his decision to buy into the theory that the election was rigged.

“In many cases, I didn’t respect them,” Trump said during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” when asked why he decided to ignore his lawyers and advisers who told him he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. “But I did respect others. I respected many others that said the election was rigged.”

Trump, the current frontrunner in the GOP presidential primary, is facing indictments related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. In the federal case against him, prosecutors cited the fact that Trump was told repeatedly by his lawyers that he had lost the election. Trump’s campaign lost dozens of lawsuits trying to challenge his 2020 defeat in the weeks after the election, with their baseless conspiracy theories swatted away.