Donald Trump Abruptly Ends NPR Interview When Asked About False Election Claims

Donald Trump abruptly ended an interview with NPR after he was pressed on his continued insistence that the 2020 election was "rigged" against him.

The former president spoke to NPR's Steve Inskeep in an interview on Tuesday which the network said had taken six years to arrange.

NPR said that the telephone interview with Trump was meant to last for around 15 minutes, but Trump hung up on Inskeep after around nine minutes.

The former president ended the interview after several lines of questioning related to his baseless claims that he lost the last election to President Joe Biden because of widespread voter fraud.

During the interview, Inskeep reminded Trump that his claims about the election more than 14 months ago have been repeatedly disproven and told Trump directly that "it is not true that there were far more votes than voters" in areas such as Philadelphia and Detroit, despite what Trump says.

The NPR host also asked the former president whether it is "an absolute" that he will only endorse Republican candidates in the 2022 midterms who back his false election claims.

Trump said candidates "that are smart" are going to support his case while naming Kari Lake, a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Arizona who has frequently shared Trump's false election fraud claims, as an example.

"She's very big on this issue. She's leading by a lot. People have no idea how big this issue is, and they don't want it to happen again. It shouldn't be allowed to happen, and they don't want it to happen again," Trump said.

"The only way it's not going to happen again is you have to solve the problem of the presidential rigged election of 2020."

Inskeep then attempted to move on and ask another question before he was interrupted by Trump stating: "So Steve, thank you very much. I appreciate it."

In response, Inskeep said: "Woah, woah, woah, I have one more question. I want to ask about a court hearing yesterday on January 6, Judge Amit Mehta. He's gone. OK."

Elsewhere in the interview, the NPR host attempted to pick holes in Trump's argument that the last election was massively rigged while simultaneously bragging about how many votes he received.

"You think Biden got 80 million votes? Because I don't believe it," Trump asked.

"It's true that you got more than any sitting president in the election you've disputed," Inskeep replied.

Trump also suggested that the size of Biden's audiences at campaign events—which were purposely scaled back because the country was in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic—is proof that Biden could not attract 80 million votes.