Trump repeated campaign lies in his interview with Joe Rogan. Here are the facts

In a three-hour interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Donald Trump delved into his false statements about voting, election fraud and his loss in the 2020 presidential election. Rogan helped support some of these claims.

The interview, published late Friday, came the same day the former president re-posted on his social media account threats hold accountable the lawyers, voters and election officials he says “cheated” in the 2024 election.

Here’s a look at some of the Republican presidential nominee’s claims and the truth.

Trump really lost the 2020 election

WHAT TRUMP SAID: “I won by that margin – they say I lost by that margin – I didn’t lose.”

THE FACTS: Trump did lose to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. Trump’s claims that fraud cost him the election have been repeatedly investigated.

own Trump attorney general said there were no signs of serious fraud. Republican-controlled State Senate Michigan, one of the swing states where Trump claims fraud occurred, came to the same conclusion after a lengthy investigation. An investigation conducted by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Office in… Wisconsinordered by the GOP-controlled Legislature in another state that Trump claimed he had no chance of winning, also found no significant fraud.

Rogan chuckled when Trump correctly said his loss was imminent. Trump lost the election by narrow margins in six swing states. If about 81,000 votes were changed, Trump could win Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin and gain enough support in the Electoral College to remain president.

Trump incorrectly called the difference 22,000 votes.

Judges have repeatedly ruled against Trump on the merits

WHAT TRUMP SAID: “What’s happened is the judges don’t want to touch it. They said, “You have no reputation.” They didn’t make a decision on the merits.”

FACTS: This is not true. Trump and his supporters lost more than 50 claims trying to cancel the elections.

A group of Republican-linked lawyers and legal scholars reviewed all 64 of Trump’s lawsuits challenging the 2020 election and found that only 20 of them were dismissed by judges before a hearing on the merits. In 30 cases, rulings against Trump came after hearings on the merits.

In the remaining 14 cases, according to a report from Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Trump and his allies dropped their cases before they even reached the merits stage. “In many cases, after making extravagant claims of wrongdoing, Trump’s legal representatives appeared in court or government proceedings empty-handed, and then returned to their rallies and media campaigns to repeat the same baseless claims,” the report said.

Almost every state already uses paper ballots

WHAT TRUMP SAID: “We should go to paper ballots.”

THE FACTS: Trump and Rogan argued that voting machines are unreliable and that the United States should rely on paper ballots. Trump even cited his supporter, billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk’s, enthusiasm for the change.

However, almost the entire country has already made this transition.

More than 90% of U.S. congressional districts used paper ballots in 2020, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. The following year, the Federal Election Assistance Commission changed its rules and recommended that every jurisdiction use paper.

The only state that does not use a voting system with paper ballots or any paper trail is a Republican state. Louisiana.

Republicans and Democrats encouraged voting by mail during the pandemic

WHAT TRUMP SAID: “They used COVID for a scam.”

THE FACTS: Trump’s main argument is that a grand Democratic conspiracy changed voting procedures during the coronavirus pandemic to make voting by mail more popular, and that the conspirators then rigged the election against him through mail-in ballots. That’s not what happened.

When the pandemic first struck during the 2020 presidential primaries in March, Republican and Democratic election officials quickly pivoted to encouraging mail-in voting to avoid crowded polling places. This was relatively uncontroversial until Trump opposed it, saying it would plant the seeds for potential fraud.

At the same time, Trump returned to his usual script, claiming that any election he does not win is fraudulent. He made the announcement about his first lost contest, the 2016 Iowa Republican Caucus. He even claimed that he lost the popular vote in 2016 due to the vote of illegal immigrants, although the presidential commission he formed to find evidence of this was dissolved without finding any evidence.

The 2020 elections took place without serious fraud

THE FACTS: Isolated cases of election fraud have long occurred, but in modern times they have not reached the level necessary to affect national elections. Associated Press review discovered less than 475 cases In all six battleground states, Trump lost by a total of more than 300,000 votes, too few to change the outcome.