Donald Trump has said he lost billions of dollars during his time as president and that he "expected" that to happen.
Trump made the claim that he suffered major financial loss while in the White House in an interview with MyPillow CEO and conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, during which the pair mainly discussed the widely disproven claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.
During the interview, Lindell described Trump as one of the few politicians who "have the people's back" whereas others make decisions based on their own agenda.
In response, Trump said that some high-profile Democrats make decisions in order to make money, whereas he willingly suffered catastrophic financial loss.
"Look at the money they make, they're full time politicians, [Nancy] Pelosi and all these people [Maxine] Waters, [Barack] Obama," Trump said,
"I expected to lose a lot of money, I lost billions. I expected that, it was okay. These people made money being president," he added.
"If somebody from Saudi Arabia stays in a suite one night for peanuts, even though I'm willing to lose billions of dollars, and say they pay $600, or whatever it is, they'll make like....I mean, it's the most incredible thing. These people have made a fortune, many of them have made a fortune. And I was prepared."
Trump did not clarify where he apparently lost his billions during his four years as president. Before he entered the White House, he resigned from his companies in order to avoid any potential conflicts of interest, although the reins were handed over to a company run by two of his sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr.
It was recently reported that Trump has sold off the lease to his flagship hotel in Washington, D.C. months after documents released by the House Oversight Committee showed it lost more than $70 million while he was was in office.
Trump went on to suggest to Lindell that Democrats' policies are proof that they "cheat on elections" as they cannot possibly be popular with half of the population.
"When you have things like no voter ID, defund the police, open borders, sanctuary cities, all of the stuff they have, I don't believe 50 percent of the people vote for them. I think they cheat on elections. And they do other things and that gets him up to that 50 percent. But they can't have 50 percent with those policies," Trump said.
Elsewhere during the interview, Trump attacked his former vice president Mike Pence for not stopping Electoral College votes from the 2020 election from being certified on January 6 during his purely ceremonial and constitutional role as presiding officer of the Senate.
"It was very sad when Mike Pence gave those votes over," Trump said. "When you have more votes than there are voters, when you have other things that are so wrong, and that was then. Since then many other things have happened."
Recently, Trump refused to condemn his supporters who were chanting "hang Mike Pence" while storming the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection, and instead referenced his false cries of voter fraud.
"If you know a vote is fraudulent, right, how can you pass on a fraudulent vote to Congress?" Trump told ABC News Washington correspondent Jon Karl.
Lindell is one of the main pushers of the so-called "Big Lie" that Trump won the 2020 election. He is currently facing a lawsuit for $1.3 billion by Dominion Voting Systems for repeatedly pushing the claim that the voting machine supplier helped rig the election in favor of Biden.
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About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, domestic policy ... Read more
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