'I didn't detect the sarcasm': ABC debate host hits Trump after he flip-flops on 2020 loss

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said Tuesday that an admission that he lost the 2020 election had been "sarcastic."

At a presidential debate with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, ABC News debate moderator David Muir asked Trump about admitting that he had lost the 2020 election "by a whisker."

"Mr. President, for three and a half years after you lost the 2020 election, you repeatedly falsely claimed that you won, many times saying you won in a landslide," Muir said. "In the past couple of weeks leading up to this debate, you have said, quote, you lost by a whisker, that you, quote, didn't quite make it, that you came up a little bit short."

"I said that?" Trump asked.

"Are you now acknowledging that you lost in 2020?" the moderator wondered.

"No, I don't acknowledge that at all," Trump insisted. "I said that sarcastically. You know that."

"I did watch all of these pieces of video," Muir told the former president. "I didn't detect the sarcasm."

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"And we should just point out here as clarification, and you know this, you and your allies, 60 cases in front of many judges, many of them Republican," the moderator added. "And said there was no widespread fraud."

"They said we didn't have standing, a technicality," Trump complained. "Can you imagine a system where a person in an election doesn't have standing?"

"We have so many facts and statistics," he added.

Watch the video below from ABC News.