CNN host Jim Acosta on Sunday highlighted how former President Donald Trump openly admitted to one key purpose of his ongoing election lies: attention.
At a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday, while heavily teasing a 2024 run, Trump regurgitated his “stolen election” lie, telling supporters that he never conceded and that President Joe Biden “didn’t get elected.”
He admitted that the issue is the main one that keeps him in the spotlight.
“It’s the single biggest issue, the issue that gets the most pull, the most respect, the biggest cheers is talking about the election fraud of the 2020 presidential election. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it,” he said.
Acosta later said Trump “just gave away the big lie” with this admission.
“He is admitting that his election lies are ego juice. Just there to pump up the crowd, the very stuff that fueled the insurrection. And by now, we know he’ll take those crocodile tears ― the big lie is the big cry, of course, as we said before ― all the way to the bank and perhaps to the 2024 election.”
Trump has aggressively fundraised and maintained significant influence over the GOP since losing last year’s election, all while heavily promoting false claims that it was rigged against him, allowing him to build up a war chest of tens of millions of dollars.
He hasn’t formally announced if he will run for president again in 2024 but has repeatedly alluded to doing so while traveling the country holding campaign-style rallies.
Watch Acosta on CNN below, courtesy of Raw Story:
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
