President Trump made the right cable news rounds on Wednesday night, with appearances on three television networks: Newsmax, One America News Network and Fox News. He started at Newsmax, where host Greg Kelly repeatedly pressed Trump on whether he could run for president again in 2024.
“By 24, it’s too early to say,” Trump replied.
Pressed several times about whether to run another race for the White House, Trump objected.
“I won’t say yet,” said Trump.
Trump, who has been largely out of public view since his January 6 rally in Washington, also cited a rally held by a few hundred supporters for him on Monday as evidence of the strength of “the whole MAGA movement” .
The interviews were ostensibly about conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, who died on Wednesday. Trump also called Fox News to talk about the announcer’s death on Wednesday afternoon.
Limbaugh was a vocal advocate for Trump and appeared with the property tycoon several times during his run for president in 2016. Trump gave Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom during his State of the Union speech in February 2020
At Newsmax, Trump repeatedly praised Limbaugh as an incomparable radio talent and “a great guy”, but he also used the 20-minute conversation to shoot politicians from both parties and make several false claims about his election defeat to Joe Biden last year’s presidential election. The former president appeared simultaneously on OANN, where he said that Limbaugh also believed that Trump was “stolen” in the campaign. Trump is expected to end the night with an appearance on Fox News.
Last week, Biden criticized Trump for providing bad information about the state of supply of COVID-19 vaccines to the country. At Newsmax, Trump suggested that Biden was pretending that “there were no vaccines” and defended his way of handling the vaccine’s launch.
“We were giving millions of injections and millions of doses, so he wasn’t telling the truth or was mentally lost,” said Trump of Biden.
The White House declined to comment on Trump’s appearances. The Biden administration said the number of doses sent to the states each week has increased by 57 percent since he took office on January 20.
Since a constant presence in cable news and social media, Trump has maintained a low profile of the public since Biden’s inauguration. Last month, it was taken off the platform by major social media companies after the attack on the United States Capitol.
Both Facebook and Twitter cited the risk of further violence. In the weeks leading up to the attack, Trump used his public position to spread unfounded conspiracy theories about Biden’s victory. He also urged his supporters to fight for the transfer of power, including a violent demonstration speech given at the national mall shortly before the attack on the Capitol. Trump repeated his false claims about the election on Newsmax.
“Really bad and dishonest things have happened,” Trump said of the vote. “It’s a shame. It is like a Third World country with elections ”.
Officials from both parties and experts said there was no reliable evidence of fraud in conjunction with last year’s election. Newsmax, which openly supports Trump, had previously echoed his conspiracy theories about the vote. However, in December, the network clarified its coverage amid the threat of defamation lawsuits by a voting software company. Since then, guests have been prevented from making false claims about the election on the channel.
Trump’s interview with Newsmax was not broadcast live, and Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy did not answer questions about whether the conversation was taped to prevent Trump from making false claims about specific software companies. Greg Kelly, the host who interviewed the former president, did not always respond when Trump made comments questioning the vote.
At Newsmax, Trump addressed his diminished media footprint, suggesting that he is “looking at many different things”, including joining different websites or starting one of his own.
“We are negotiating with several people and there is also another option to build your own website,” said Trump, adding: “It has become very boring. We don’t want to go back to Twitter. “
Since leaving the White House, his public presence has been largely limited to e-mail statements. On Tuesday, he launched a 600-word diatribe attacking Senate Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell, who had written a Wall Street Journal editorial blaming Trump for the attack on the Capitol.
Kelly asked Trump on Wednesday if he was interested in following in Limbaugh’s footsteps on the radio. Trump timidly called the idea “one of those little things that always comes up”, but indicated that it would be difficult to replace Limbaugh.
“A lot of people are mentioning this, and no, it’s nothing that I have thought of. He would be difficult to replace, ”said Trump of Limbaugh. “I would say that he is irreplaceable.”
Trump was much more direct when Kelly asked if he missed being president.
“Yes,” said Trump. “Everything was going very well. … Is very bad.”