After weeks of absence from any televised statements, the disgraced former president who was impeached twice and never won the popular vote, Donald Trump, made the unfortunate decision to do the right-wing media circuit on Wednesday following the death of Rush Limbaugh. Trump sat for interviews with Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax, continuing to push the same lies that caused an insurrection and ended with five people dead and many more injured.
Former President Donald Trump gave phone interviews to conservative television networks after the death of radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. https://t.co/FaUAyw6Rrz
— USA TODAY Politics (@usatodayDC) February 18, 2021
Trump told OAN that he’s not sure whether or not he’ll run again in 2024, saying it’s “too early to say – but I see a lot of great polls out there,” but his political movement “is very strong and it’s getting stronger.” Currently, only 54 percent of Republicans say they would vote for Trump again if he ran. At one time, Trump had an approval rating of over 90 percent with GOP voters. Despite disapproval over his incitement of an insurrection based on an election fraud lie, Trump continued to push the story.
After very briefly expressing his grief at the death of right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh, Trump complained that his riots weren’t as big as a Democrat’s would have been, saying:
‘Rush thought we won and so do I, by the way. I think we won substantially. I don’t think that could have happened to a Democrat, you would have had riots going all over the place if that happened to a Democrat.’
Trump also didn’t hesitate to insult his once political rival, the man who finally unseated him, President Joe Biden. The ex-president who said that people should inject bleach as a treatment for COVID-19 seized on a statement from Biden, who said there were “no vaccines” instead of “not enough vaccines” in a recent public appearance. The former president who once said that Frederick Douglass, who died 1895, is “an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice,” said that Biden might be mentally incompetent.
On Greg Kelly Reports, Trump said:
‘I saw that he said there was no vaccine when he came into office, and yet he got a shot before he came into office. It was already in early November when we announced it, but we actually had it substantially before that. We were giving millions of shots and millions of doses. So he’s either not telling a truth, or he’s mentally gone, one or the other.”‘
Trump, now on Newsmax with Greg Kelly, is using the occasion of Rush Limbaugh's death to do a Big Lie tour pic.twitter.com/iaUMySkuat
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 18, 2021
On Newsmax, a network that has continued to push the lies about Dominion vote tabulating machines and how they switched votes, costing Trump the election, Trump was notably silent on the matter. Apparently, he doesn’t want to end up being sued for billions like his “attorney,” Rudy Giuliani, and his once favorite network, Fox News.
According to The Daily Beast:
‘The two companies have been waging legal campaigns and lawsuits against Trumpworld luminaries who promulgated baseless conspiracy theories that the voting tech companies had helped steal and rig the 2020 election in Biden’s favor. Then-President Trump himself had promoted such claims, and some of his allies being sued, such as Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, were also spewing these groundless smears.’
“It was a stolen, fixed election,” Trump says on Newsmax, repeating the lie that led to the Jan. 6 insurrection. He also complained about McConnell’s criticism. “If he spent the same time hitting Schumer and Biden, the Republicans would be much better off” https://t.co/LNMdNXqyDZ
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 18, 2021
