Donald Trump admitted he lost the 2020 election in the days after the vote, a new documentary claims.
‘Stop the Steal’ says the former president was watching Joe Biden on TV while in the White House when he said, ‘Can you believe I lost to this f***ing guy?’
The claim in the documentary, by director Dan Reed, is likely to cause fresh embarrassment for Trump, who was embroiled in a row earlier this month for admitting he lost in 2020.
Trump said in early September that Biden beat him “by a hair,” prompting defections from his MAGA supporters and an abrupt about-face from the former president.
Stopping the Steal, which premieres Tuesday on HBO, depicts the events leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection at a time when Trump’s allies are trying to put the matter behind them in anticipation of the Nov. 5 election.
Donald Trump, during a late-night speech during the 2020 election, claimed to have been the victim of voter fraud. “Frankly, we won this election,” he said.
Stopping the Steal, which premieres Tuesday on HBO, chronicles the events leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The film includes harsh criticism of Trump from Attorney General Bill Barr, who says the former president’s conduct that day was “despicable.”
In a brutally dismissive comment, Barr says that when he saw the fringe lawyers Trump turned to after losing the election, he thought they looked like a “bar scene from Star Wars.”
Reed’s previous films include Finding Neverland, the shocking documentary about Michael Jackson, and The Truth vs Alex Jones about the defamation lawsuits brought against the Infowars host that led to a $1.5 billion judgment against him.
This time, Reed focuses on Trump’s refusal to concede defeat in 2020 and the event that led a mob of his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Among those interviewed in Stopping the Steal is Alyssa Farah Griffith, director of strategic communications for the Trump White House.
She says it was a “very strange moment” when a sitting president lost an election but did not acknowledge his defeat and called the result fraudulent.
In the documentary, he says, ‘My office is right around the corner from the Oval Office.
‘I remember I poked my head in and he (Trump) was watching Fox News and Joe Biden was on there and he said, “Can you believe I lost to this fucking guy?”
Alyssa Farah Griffith, Trump’s White House director of strategic communications, said Trump told her: “Can you believe I lost to this f***ing guy?”
Farah Griffith did not give an exact date for when Trump said this, but in the film’s timeline it appears to have been a few days after the vote.
Farah Griffith did not give an exact date for when Trump said this, but in the film’s timeline it appears to have been a few days after the vote.
Trump has repeatedly denied losing in 2020, but earlier this month he told podcaster Lex Fridman that Biden “beat us by a hair,” adding that it was “a terrible thing.”
The documentary debuts on HBO Max on Tuesday
His comments sparked outrage among Trump’s staunchest supporters, including white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.
Fuentes ranted on his podcast: “So why did we do Stop the Steal? Why did anyone go to January 6? Why did anyone go to jail?”
He said Trump should have made his admission publicly “before 1,600 people were charged” with crimes related to the insurrection.
Fuentes accused Trump of “tremendous betrayal” and “callous disregard for the sacrifices his supporters made in his name.”
Following the scandal, Trump claimed his comments were made “sarcastically” and that he did not lose.
Stopping the Steal includes vivid descriptions of Election Night 2020 from people including Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s White House communications director.
She says that at 2 a.m., when Fox News declared Biden the winner in Arizona and it looked like he was going to win, the White House was a mess.
Trump has repeatedly denied losing in 2020, but earlier this month he told podcaster Lex Fridman that Biden “beat us by a hair.”
The documentary focuses on Trump’s refusal to concede defeat in 2020 and the event that led a mob of his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Grisham says: ‘The president was standing in the middle of this crowd of people and it was just chaos.
“Everyone is screaming, Trump is waving a piece of paper in his hand, he is so angry. When he is angry, you don’t even want to be in his line of sight.”
“Suddenly it was as if a light switch had been turned on and everyone started coming down the stairs to wait for him and hear his words.”
Trump claimed in his speech that he had been a victim of fraud, saying: “Frankly, we won this election.”
Grisham says: ‘When he started going down that ‘we won’ road, frankly, I was devastated.
“I felt very disappointed with my president. I thought how could he do this to the country and leave everyone hanging like that. I started crying, I was angry.”
Stopping the Steal includes vivid descriptions of Election Night 2020 from people including Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s White House communications director.
Grisham said she was devastated when Trump declared on election night that he was the victim of fraud.
Barr describes Trump’s comments as “very dangerous,” one of many harsh comments he has made about his former boss.
In the weeks after the election, Barr investigated dozens of increasingly outlandish allegations of fraud by Trump but failed to find any evidence to support them.
Barr told Trump that was “bullshit,” but Trump ignored him and turned to people like Sidney Powell and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who indulged in baseless conspiracy theories about communist plots from Venezuela.
During a high-profile White House meeting in December 2020, Powell, Trump and others discussed using the military to seize voting machines.
Looking at the people Trump associated with, Barr tells the documentary they were so quirky they looked like a “bar scene from Star Wars.”
Barr also describes Trump’s fury after he issued a statement saying he could find no evidence of election fraud.
“I went to the Oval Office and the president was angrier than ever,” he says.
The film includes harsh criticism of Trump from Attorney General Bill Barr, who says the former president’s conduct that day was “despicable.”
Barr calls Trump’s comments ‘very dangerous,’ one of many harsh comments about his former boss
‘He was blushing, breathing heavily. He asked me: Why did you say that?
“I said it because it’s the truth. He said, ‘You’ve taken the floor out from under my feet, this is killing me. You must hate Trump.'”
“(I said) I don’t hate you, Mr. President… you brought out that clown car, you wasted five or six weeks with that bullshit theory. People are just telling that bullshit to the American people.”
Laughing, Barr, who resigned shortly after the meeting, added that Trump was “very resentful.”
Back to January 6, Barr says he is “completely outraged” by the fact that Trump watched events unfold on television for two hours and did nothing.
“I felt like he precipitated the whole thing, that was outrageous,” Barr says.
Barr called Trump’s pressure campaign on his vice president, Mike Pence, to stop the certification of the vote in Congress “despicable.”
“The president’s conduct was a betrayal of his supporters. What he did was irresponsible and shameful,” he said.
Other critics of Trump include Rusty Bowers, former speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives.
Other critics of Trump include Rusty Bowers, former speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives.
Bowers testified before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol alongside Georgia officials Brad Raffensperger and Gabe Sterling.
He recalled that Trump and Giuliani, who was working as Trump’s personal lawyer at the time, called him and asked him to reject the vote that showed Biden winning the state by a narrow margin.
When Bowers asked Giuliani for evidence, he said he would send it to her, but she never received it.
Recounting the conversation, Bowers says, “The guy (Rudy) is directly asking me to throw the election.”
Bowers refused and was subjected to a series of abuses and threats from Trump supporters, who showed up at his home and called him a pedophile.