Former President Donald Trump repeated his lies about his election loss in his first major speech since leaving office on Sunday, ABC News reports.
Trump spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where numerous speakers spewed outright falsehoods claiming election fraud that has been rejected by courts around the country.
“This election was rigged, and the Supreme Court and other courts didn’t want to do anything about it,” Trump falsely claimed, insisting that he won an election he lost by more than 7 million votes.
“They rejected it,” he said. “They should be ashamed of themselves for what they've done to our country. They didn't have the guts or the courage to make the right decision.”
Trump did not announce that he would run for president again but teased a 2024 bid during his speech.
“I may even decide to beat them for a third time, okay?” he falsely declared after refusing to accept his loss and costing his party control of the House and Senate for the first time in a decade.
Trump targets GOP:
Trump’s main target was not Democrats but Republicans who supported his impeachment. Trump said he is “not interested” in starting a new party.
“We have the Republican Party,” he said. “It's going to unite and be stronger than ever before. I am not starting a new party. That was fake news. Fake news, no. Wouldn't that be brilliant? ‘Let's start a new party, let's divide our vote so that you can never win.’ No, we're not interested in that.”
He insisted that the GOP was “united” before listing off Republicans disloyal to him.
"The Democrats don't have grandstanders like Mitt Romney, little Ben Sasse, Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Pat Toomey,” he said. “And in the House, Tom Rice, South Carolina, Adam Kinzinger, Dan Newhouse, Anthony Gonzalez -- that's another beauty -- Fred Upton, Jamie Herrera Beutler, Peter Meyer, John Katko, David Valadao and the warmonger, a person that loves seeing our troops fighting: Liz Cheney."
Trump touts January 6 “lovefest”:
Shortly after his speech, Trump spoke with Fox News to brag about the size of his audience at the January 6 rally that preceded the deadly Capitol riot, which he described as a “lovefest.”
“The press doesn’t like to talk about it, but the real number was much, much bigger... It was tremendous numbers of people, not the Capitol, I’m talking about the rally itself, and it was a lovefest, it was a beautiful thing,” he said.
Trump said he “hated” to see the violence at the Capitol but quickly blamed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over lack of security and complained about what he called a “double standard” that “nobody seems to be bothered” by unspecified violence from “the radical left.”
