Politics
President Trump Breaks a Microphone While Storming Out of Heated Interview: ‘You’re Either Crooked or Stupid’
President Donald Trump got angry and stormed out of an interview with Meet the Press’ Kristen Welker after she pressed him for evidence that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged.”
Trump, 79, sat down with the journalist, 49, at a farm in Wisconsin on Friday, June 5, for a lengthy Meet the Press interview that aired on Sunday, June 7. A heated exchange broke out between the president and Welker after she asked him to present evidence of his longtime claim that he won the 2020 election and not former president Joe Biden due to election fraud.
“Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough,” he said, removing his microphone and dropping it to the ground. “Thank you, darling.”
After some more back and forth in which Welker implored him to continue the interview, saying she traveled all the way to Wisconsin, Trump said he’d given her enough time. As he stood up to leave, he appeared to step on the microphone just as the audio cut out.
The tense exchange began when the interviewer asked about the president’s proposed $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” that would compensate those who were prosecuted for their participation in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
This led Trump to repeat unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was rigged against him by Democrats. When Welker noted that he’s never presented evidence to support those claims, Trump appeared to get angry.
“There’s a lot of evidence, there’s nothing but evidence, there’s tremendous evidence. The election was rigged. It was a dirty election,” he said.
The Apprentice alum then claimed, also without evidence, that cheating is happening again in the current elections in California, where Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt and gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton enjoyed an initial lead immediately after polls closed but have since dropped behind Democratic challengers as mail-in votes are counted.
According to the Associated Press, California has notoriously slow vote counting because it offers mail-in voting to all citizens and continues to count any that were postmarked before election day and arrive within seven days of the election. Despite that fact, Trump argued it wasn’t “appropriate” for a winner not to be called within four days, arguing the only explanation is Democratic “cheating.”
When Welker asked him once again to present evidence that cheating is happening in California, Trump again dodged.
“All I have to do is look,” he said. “And I listen, and I listen to people, and let’s see what happens.”
He went on to tell Welker, “You’re either crooked or you’re stupid,” before ultimately storming off.
