President Trump walked out of an interview with NBC News in Wisconsin after he was challenged on his claims of election fraud and struggled to provide evidence for those claims.
In an interview with NBC News’ Kristen Welker that was taped Friday and aired Sunday, Welker pressed the president for evidence on his claims of election fraud in the 2020 election and claims that election fraud is currently happening in the California primaries. California, which allows for last-minute mail-in ballots, is taking days to finish counting ballots in close primary contests. California’s gubernatorial primary and Los Angeles mayoral race are still undecided nearly a week later. State officials say it’s common to take days and even weeks to count the millions of mail-in ballots due to California laws and processes.
The president, however, claimed it’s taking California days to count the ballots “because they’re cheating on the election,” and Welker asked, “Do you have evidence to support that?” The president retorted, “All I have to do is look,” without citing support for his claims, aside from the length of time. “But that’s not evidence,” Welker responded.
After the president accused Welker of being “crooked or stupid,” he insisted that there’s “more evidence than ever presented” that the 2020 election was rigged. When Welker pointed out that the president and his allies went to court to litigate those election claims — and only prevailed in one minor case out of 62 cases total — the president again called Welker and NBC “crooked,” adding that he thinks the same thing about ABC, CBS and CNN.
“You’re a one-sided crooked network,” Mr. Trump said. “Sorry. Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time.”
After another moment of exchanges in which Welker urged him to stay, the president walked off camera.
The California election system is famously slow, and experts have warned it could take days or weeks to finish counting votes. Experts and California Gov. Gavin Newsom knew the vote counting would be slow even before it began. Last month, Newsom sent an open letter to county election officials, urging them to speed up the counting process to fight off unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about election security.
“California really cares about counting its ballots,” Christian Grose, USC professor of political science, told CBS News before the primary election. “And so as a result, we have a lot of different ways to vote.”
Trump-nominated first assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said over the weekend that his office has opened “multiple election fraud investigations,” alleging the system in California has “serious structural vulnerabilities.” His office is attempting to audit the state’s voter rolls.
Mr. Trump defended the idea of using money from the “anti-weaponization fund” created by his administration to pay Jan. 6 rioters, saying the 2020 election was “rigged.” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Trump administration is “not moving forward” with the fund, but he refused to commit to that in writing.
When Mr. Trump was asked if he thought people convicted of assaulting police officers deserved a payout from the fund, Mr. Trump said “I wouldn’t be inclined to say so, but I have to see it.”
During the interview, which aired on “Meet the Press,” Mr. Trump also claimed he never promised not to get the U.S. into new wars.
“First of all, I didn’t guarantee no war,” the president told Welker. “Why would I have built the strongest military in the world?”
But on the campaign trail, Mr. Trump repeatedly pledged to “expel the warmongers from our government” and strongly hinted there would be no new wars, like was the case in his first term.
“I’m going to keep you out of wars, I kept you out of wars,” the president said in a July 24, 2024, campaign rally.
And in his November 2024 victory speech, he said, “We had no wars. Four years, we had no wars. Except we defeated ISIS. We defeated ISIS in record time. But we had no wars. They said, ‘He will start a war.’ I’m not going to start a war, I’m going to stop wars.”
The NBC Interview was not the first time the president has ended an interview abruptly over the questions.
In October 2020, he walked out of a “60 Minutes” interview with CBS News’ Lesley Stahl, voicing complaints about “tough questions.” In January 2022, he ended an interview with NPR when he was challenged about his 2020 election claims.
NBC News published a full transcript of the interview.
