Trump admits he lost 2020 election in speech raging against Manhattan prosecution

Former President Donald Trump returned to Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday evening for a speech trashing the criminal case against him in New York.

But at the beginning of the speech, during a rant about Democrats, Trump did something unusual — he admitted that he actually lost the 2020 presidential election, while alleging that Democrats kept information away from voters that would have changed the result.

"Democrats spied on my campaign. Remember that?" said Trump. "They attacked me with an onslaught of fraudulent investigations. Russia, Russia, Russia. Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine. Impeachment hoax number one, impeachment hoax number two. The illegal and unconstitutional raid on Mar-a-Lago, right here. Lying to the FISA courts. The FBI and DOJ relentlessly pursuing Republicans. Unconstitutional changes to election laws by not getting approvals from state legislators."

Above all, Trump said, "The millions of votes illegally stuffed into ballot boxes and all caught on government cameras. And just recently, the FBI and DOJ in collusion with Twitter and Facebook in order not to say anything bad about the Hunter Biden laptop from him, which exposes the Biden family as criminals in which according to the pollsters would have made a 17-point difference in the election result, and we needed a lot less than that, like about 16.9. It would have been in our favor. Not my favor, our favor, because our country is going to hell."

Trump has rarely acknowledged his loss since being removed from office in 2020, even after grudgingly committing to a peaceful transition of power in the immediate aftermath of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Many Republicans running for key state offices in the subsequent midterms, some of whom lost their own races, have followed his lead, with failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake even calling Biden an "illegitimate" president.