Trump Makes Most Revealing Slip Yet About the Big Lie in New Audio

New audio from Variety co–editor in chief Ramin Setoodeh’s interview with Donald Trump confirms what the American public has known all along: The former president knows he lost the 2020 election.

During one of his six interviews with Trump for his book Apprentice in Wonderland, about Trump’s time on his reality show The Apprentice, Setoodah inquired about Trump’s relationship with former Fox News host Geraldo Rivera, who was a contestant on season 7 of the show. “And are you guys still close, or you no longer … ?” asked Setoodeh.

“No, I don’t think so. He is, uh, after I lost the election,” Trump began. Catching himself revealing that he never believed his own claims of a rigged election, he quickly revised his answer.

“I won the election, but when they said we lost, he called me three or four times,” he continued.

This is not the first time the veil has been pulled back on what was clearly a cynical attempt by Trump to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after his legitimate loss in the 2020 election. Former Attorney General William Barr alleged in 2023 that Trump “knew well he lost the election,” and former chief of staff Mark Meadows, as well as aides Cassidy Hutchinson and Alyssa Farah Griffin, made similar claims when testifying before the House January 6 select committee.  

As CNN anchor Jim Acosta pointed out, however, Trump has never before admitted that he lost out loud, maintaining—even as lawsuit after lawsuit has ruled out the possibility of voter fraud or voting machine malfunctions—that he defeated Joe Biden.

The slip is more than just embarrassing for the 2024 presumptive Republican nominee, who continues to stoke the flames of electoral conspiracy among his supporters, four years after they stormed the Capitol. Trump’s claim may have legal consequences. 

Special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump alleges that he employed “knowingly false” claims of election fraud in his attempt to overturn the results of the election. That Trump would so quickly walk back a comment made during an interview for a book about his prepresidential reality TV show suggests that he’s aware of the tightrope he’s walking.