Former President Trump said Sunday that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House in 2021.
Speaking at a rally in Lititz, Pa., the former president confirmed Democrats’ concerns about him not wanting to give up power after he lost the presidential election in 2020.
“I shouldn’t have left, I mean, honestly,” Trump said. “We did so well.”
“So now, every polling booth has hundreds of lawyers standing there,” Trump added.
Trump, who has refused to accept that he lost the last election to President Biden, lost support among some voters after his supporters attempted to stop Congress from certifying the election results following a speech on the Ellipse in Washington.
Trump has been sharply criticized for sitting in the White House while people stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, attacking law enforcement and damaging Capitol grounds.
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said in her 2022 book that Trump reportedly told his aides that he would remain in the White House after Biden was inaugurated.
“I’m just not going to leave,” Trump told one aide, according to Haberman’s book.
“We’re never leaving. How can you leave when you won an election?” he told another.
Sarafina Chitika, a senior spokesperson for the Harris campaign, said in a post online that Trump’s message about not leaving the White House is a “dark closing message from a candidate with nothing to offer the American people.”
“It’s time to turn the page on” Trump, Chitika’s post said.
Vice President Harris also delivered remarks from the Ellipse. On Tuesday, more than 75,000 people flocked to Washington to hear one of the vice president’s closing appeals to voters.
She drove home the point that where she stood, Trump refused to accept his loss. Trump stood “at this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election.”
Harris believes that some reluctant voters can be moved to the ballot box by hearing her arguments that Trump’s past conduct makes him unfit for office.
With just days until the election, Harris and Trump are neck and neck. The former president leads with a 0.1 percentage point lead nationally over Harris, The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s aggregation of polls found.
