Trump Admitted It Was 'Embarrassing' He Lost, According To Cassidy Hutchinson Transcript
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Contrary to Donald Trump’s rant earlier this week, he knew he had lost the 2020 presidential election and was “embarrassed” about it, according to transcripts released Thursday of testimony that former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson provided to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
“I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark. This is embarrassing,” Hutchinson testified that Trump told her boss at the time, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. “Figure it out.”
Hutchinson also testified that John Ratcliffe, the former director of national intelligence, recounted that Trump had privately conceded that he lost the election.
Hutchinson testified, quoting Ratcliffe: “He’s like, ‘I’ve had a few conversations with the president where he acknowledged he’s lost. He hasn’t acknowledged that he wants to concede, but he acknowledges that he lost the election. Then he’ll immediately backpedal.’”
Hutchinson’s testimony about Trump’s admission about his “embarrassing” loss was first revealed in a Jan. 6 committee hearing in October. The release of the transcript was the first time the former aide’s full testimony was made public.
Former White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin also testified to the Jan. 6 committee that Trump had acknowledged his loss to her. She said he blurted out after Democrat Joe Biden was declared the winner: “Can you believe I lost to this guy?”
At one point he also referred to the “incoming administration” to Griffin in a “slip-up,” Griffin told then-deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews, according to a newly released transcript of Matthews’ testimony to the committee.
The testimony could present a different legal risk for Trump if he truly believed, without any evidence, that the election was rigged — or if he deliberately lied to fire up his supporters in a bid to steal the White House in an insurrection fueled by his deluded backers.
Trump apparently recognizes the potential risk because he furiously insisted Tuesday that any indication he knew he had lost the election was a “total LIE.” He claimed in a Truth Social diatribe Tuesday that he “never ... for even a moment” believed he had lost the 2020 election.
Fox News host Sean Hannity, a Trump partisan, admitted when he was deposed earlier this year in a massive defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News that he never believed Trump had won the 2020 election or that the vote was somehow fraudulent.
Unlike Trump, who claimed “not for a moment” did he believe he had lost the presidency, Hannity said “not for one second” did he think the election was rigged against his friend. Hannity, however, pushed the lie on his program.
Hutchinson also testified that allies of the former president told her to hide her full knowledge of what was happening in the White House during the storming of the Capitol two years ago. She was also told that mysterious lucrative jobs were waiting in the wings for her — after her testimony, she told the panel.
