A stopped clock, they say, is right twice a day. Donald Trump tells the truth even less than that. On the off-chances he does it’s usually by accident. The former president has been known to inadvertently admit he lost re-election in 2020. Now we know it’s happened more than once.
In a video posted by The Atlantic (as caught by Insider), Trump spoke to historians via Zoom back in July. Perhaps his guard was down. Whatever the case, he let slip a fact even he, deep down, may believe is true: Joe Biden kicked his butt.
Trump was in the midst of discussing his relationship with South Korea, who he never seem to like as much as he did the dictatorship to its north. He bragged about effectively ripping the nation off, forcing them to pay more than they would for its own defense. Trump claimed he’d cut a great, if inequal deal … which was then scotched by him not being re-elected.
“By not winning the election, he was the happiest man — I would say, in order, China was — no, Iran was the happiest,” Trump told the historians. Though what he uttered was classic Trump word salad, he did slip a fact in there: He didn’t win in 2020. Trump went on, saying South Korea had been all set to fork over $5 billion a year. “But when I didn’t win the election, he had to be the happiest — I would rate, probably, South Korea third or fourth happiest.”
So there you go: an admission that he lost. Or is it? There are indeed many, countless problems with Trump, and one of them is that he’s such a terrible speaker that he can’t always be held accountable for what he says — or at least claim he didn’t mean what he did say. A man who’s been known to deny saying words of which there are clear records will undoubtedly do the same in this instance.
Perhaps Trump’s right: He probably didn’t mean to admit the truth, especially not about the 2020 election. And yet there it is, video of a former president who’s spent the last year-and-a-half spouting the contrary, uttering those magic words: “I didn’t win the election.”
You can watch that video over at The Atlantic.