Former President Donald Trump said that he “shouldn’t have left the White House” after losing the 2020 election — and that he wouldn’t mind seeing reporters get shot if someone were to again try to assassinate him.
Trump expressed his regrets about engaging in the peaceful transfer of power to President Joe Biden during an apparently unscripted remark while discussing border security at a campaign rally Sunday, according to multiple reports.
“We had the safest border in the history of our country the day that I left,” the Republican presidential nominee told supporters in Lititz, Pennsylvania. “I shouldn’t have left, I mean, honestly.”
Trump added, “We did so well, we had such a great — ” before ending the train of thought and abruptly saying, “So, now every polling booth has hundreds of lawyers standing there,” the New York Times reported.
Trump, who baselessly claims he was cheated out of a 2020 election victory, lost the popular vote by more than 7 million votes, according to a state-by-state tally compiled by Fox News.
Biden also won the Electoral College, 306-232, narrowly exceeding Trump’s 304-227 victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to the National Archives.
More than 60 lawsuits filed by Trump and his supporters failed to reverse the 2020 results and Trump faces indictments in Washington, D.C., and Georgia over his alleged efforts to illegally overturn his defeat.
RYAN M. KELLY/AFP via Getty Images
Trump’s disjointed speech Sunday also included remarks about the ballistic glass that’s been used to protect him at outdoor events since he was shot in the ear during an assassination attempt in July, according to the Associated Press.
“I have this piece of glass here,” he said. “But all we have really over here is the fake news. And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don’t mind that so much.”
A Trump campaign spokesperson claimed in a prepared statement that the comments had “nothing to do with the Media being harmed, or anything else.”
Spokesperson Steven Cheung also claimed Trump was instead suggesting that that reporters were in “great danger themselves, and should have had a glass protective shield, also.”
On Thursday, Trump called former Rep. Liz Cheney, an outspoken Republican critic who’s supporting Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, a “radical war hawk” and suggested she should face a firing squad.
“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. OK?” he said during a campaign event with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in Glendale, Arizona. “Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, said Friday that she’d “asked my criminal division chief to start looking at that statement, analyzing it for whether it qualifies as a death threat under Arizona’s laws.”
