Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he has no regrets about contesting the results of the 2020 election and said that when it comes to “getting the election straight,” it’s important to “follow your heart.”
“No, it would have been a terrible thing because you have to get the elections straightened out. You have to have fair and free elections,” Trump said when asked if he would have liked to accept Joe Biden’s 2020 victory during an interview with WGAL, NBC affiliate in Pennsylvania.
“And if you don’t, you should always have the right to challenge them,” Trump added. “If you couldn’t contest elections, you wouldn’t even have a democracy. You wouldn’t have elections anymore. You have to do what you are – you really have to follow your heart.”
Trump frequently airs his election grievances during campaign rallies and continues to wrongly insist that he won the 2020 election. He championed the cause of his supporters who challenged the election results and stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, saying that I would “absolutely” consider forgiving them.
In a recent interview with Time, Trump said he would have difficulty hiring anyone who believed Biden won in 2020: “I wouldn’t feel good about it.”
Last week, Trump also did not commit to accepting the results of the upcoming 2024 elections – a position shared by many of his supporters.
“If everything is honest, I will gladly accept the results. I won’t change that,” Trump said in a interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “If it’s not, you’ll have to fight for the country’s rights.”
In his comments to WGAL on Tuesday, Trump also compared the Jan. 6 riot to pro-Palestine protests on campus — insisting that the riot, where lots of people died and around 140 police officers were injured – it was “nothing” compared to the protests on campus. Trump said the recent protests showed that Biden “is a threat to democracy.”
“January. 6 was nothing like that,” he said. “They’re destroying all our schools, they’re destroying our institutions.”
Biden said he supports people’s right to demonstrate but condemned any violent behavior.
“There is a right to protest, but not a right to cause chaos,” Biden said in remarks last week.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
