U.S. President Donald Trump stormed out of an NBC Meet the Press interview after facing questions over potential compensation for Jan. 6 rioters and being pressed to provide evidence of election fraud, which he falsely claimed happened in 2020 and has said without evidence is occurring currently in the California gubernatorial primaries.
His exit came during a heated exchange with NBC journalist Kristen Welker in an interview on Friday from a farm in Wisconsin, which aired on Sunday.
“It’s happening right now in California,” the president said, arguing that the state’s multi-day vote counting process amounted to evidence of fraud and then suggesting that Republican votes were “dropping fast because it’s a rigged election.”
“The Republicans are doing well in California,” Welker responded, before adding that there is no evidence of fraud in either the 2020 federal election or the ongoing California primaries.
In California, the top two candidates in a gubernatorial election advance to a general election. Polls show Democratic candidate Xavier Becerra advancing to the general election with Republican Steve Hilton in second place with 72 per cent of the vote in.
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When Welker asked the president to provide evidence of fraud in California, he said, “All I have to do is look.”
“They’re crooked, just like you’re crooked, your press is crooked. And Meet the Press is crooked,” Trump added.
While Welker attempted to ask further questions, the president interrupted.
“You’re either crooked or you’re stupid. You play right into their hands with this crap,” he told her.
“You know that these elections are rigged. Your network knows that they’re rigged,” he went on before unclipping his microphone and saying, “Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough.”
“Thank you, darling. Have a good time,” he said as he stood up and began to walk away.
Before cutting the interview short, Trump addressed the war in Iran, where he said he had “wiped out” a nuclear threat.
He also touched on the U.S. economy, rising gas prices, interest rates and his nearly $2-billion “anti-weaponization fund” — which was blocked by a federal judge last month — designed to compensate Americans “who suffered weaponization and lawfare.”
The proposed fund has spurred concerns it would be used to compensate individuals charged with assaulting police officers in the Jan. 6, 2021, riots who Trump said have been victimized by the country’s legal system.
More than 1,500 people pleaded guilty to crimes related to Jan. 6, according to the legal publication Lawfare.
On the first day of his second term as president, Trump granted mass clemency to people who were convicted of, or awaiting trial for, offences related to the 2021 attack.
“People have been hurt so badly by radical left lunatics that worked for the Biden administration and sleepy Joe, they’re vicious, they’re violent what they did to people, and of course they went after me more than anybody else,” he told Welker in defence of the fund.
“They raided Mar-a-Lago and all the other things but people have been badly hurt, they’ve committed suicide, they’ve lost their jobs, they’ve lost their families, they’ve lost their wives, they’ve lost everything over a fake weaponization of government.”
“If it was up to me, I’d pay them the kind of money that they deserve,” he went on, claiming the people who took part in the riots were targeted by a “bunch of thugs.”
His comments in support of the fund came less than a week after acting attorney general Todd Blanche told lawmakers during a House appropriations committee hearing that the administration would not move forward with it.
The idea for the fund stemmed from a settlement of a lawsuit the president brought against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over the disclosure of his tax returns, which included an agreement to bar the agency from auditing him. Despite saying the fund had been scrapped last week, Blanche also said during the hearing that the IRS would still be prohibited from auditing Trump, his family and any related entities, according to a report by the Guardian.
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