Geraldo Rivera Details ‘Lost’ Election Talk with Trump After Audio Recording Drops: ‘I Wanted to Console Him’
Geraldo Rivera declared he “misses” Donald Trump following the former president briefly acknowledging he “lost” the 2020 presidential election in an audio recording discussing Rivera.
Rivera joined Chris Cuomo on NewsNation on Thursday to discuss the new audio recording of Trump, which includes him talking to Variety co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh. The interview is part of a new book Apprentice in Wonderland. In the recording, Setoodeh asks Trump about Rivera.
While discussing his ex-friend, Trump corrected himself quickly after saying he “lost” the 2020 election.
“Are you guys still close or —?” the reporter asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” Trump said. “He is — after I lost the election — I won the election but when they said we lost, he called me up three or four times.”
FIRST ON MSNBC: New audio from Trump interviews admitting he lost in 2020 pic.twitter.com/mYp091Kw06
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) June 20, 2024
Rivera told Cuomo he has no interest in a “pissing match” with Trump, but did correct him and said it was Trump who called him after the election, rather than the other way around.
“I feel nothing but melancholy and a wistful kind of friendship lost. I like the president very much. I still like him except what he did on Jan. 6. That kind of ended our relationship,” he said.
Rivera detailed the conversation, saying he wanted to “console” Trump over the loss, but he found him asking about things like Dominion and other election fraud conspiracy theories. Dominion, behind voting machines used in 2020, has filed a number of defamation suits against critics who spread baseless conspiracy theories about the election. Fox News settled a suit for nearly $800 million last year.
“I wanted to console him for his loss… but he lost and he started asking me about things like, have I heard about Dominion, one of the computer companies that counts votes that he alleged was run by Hugo Chavez or some absurd kind of surmise,” Rivera said.
The former Fox News contributor said the recording made it sound like Trump “misses” him, and he acknowledged he misses the former president too, describing him as a “rabbi” in his career. Rivera competed on Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice where Rivera said the former president backed him against network executives and was “sweet and considerate and compassionate” to him and his family.
“I feel awful about the way things turned out. I feel awful that he has in his mind this obsession that the election was fixed, I think he’s done a lot of harm to the Constitution,” he said. “I want him to know I have no ill-will toward Trump at all. I choose to remember the good times.”
Watch above via NewsNation.
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