Donald Trump, ever the patient interview subject, went off script and interrupted Newsmax anchor Rob Finnerty in a Thursday appearance, fearing the network would cut his election tirade and telling Finnerty, “Don’t let it happen.”
“They don’t talk about any of the things that refute January 6,” Trump said regarding the congressional hearings. “They don’t talk the election numbers.”
Halfway through his tangent, he called out Fox News and Newsmax for not airing his election fraud lies, saying, “You’re afraid of being sued or something.”
While Finnerty responded by asking if Trump was referring to the 2022 movie “2000 Mules,” a pro-Trump political film that alleges fraud in the 2020 election, Trump claimed that the conservative network will omit his tangent from the interview. “They’ll probably cut what I’m saying out,” Trump said.
Despite Finnerty’s insistence that Newsmax would not cut it out, Trump continued his rant, telling his interviewer “Don’t let it happen.” Finnerty reassured Trump, who replied, “Good … Get it done fast before Chris sees it,” referring to Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy.
With this reassurance, Trump resumed his Big Lie diatribe, saying “But this was about a rigged and stolen election that millions and millions of people felt is true.”
Following this interruption, the pair resumed their discussion of “2000 Mules,” which was brought up at the second January 6 committee hearing when former Attorney General Bill Barr dismissed the claim that the election had been stolen by election fraud. “I haven’t seen anything since the election that changes my mind on that, including the ‘2,000 Mules’ movie,” Barr said.
In the interview, Trump denigrated Cassidy Hutchinson, calling her a “whack job” and denying Hutchinson’s testimony that he lunged at his Secret Service security on January 6.
In an interview with ABC News broadcasting Thursday morning, Rep. Liz Chaney defended Hutchinson from Secret Service agents disputing her testimony. Chaney said that she was “absolutely confident in her credibility — I’m confident in her testimony.”