At various points in our interview, Trump presented other examples of what he called proof the election had been stolen from him.

“Take all of the dead people that voted, and there were thousands of them, by the way. We have lists of obituaries,” Trump argued. “If you take the illegal immigrants that voted. If you take this—Indians that got paid to vote in different places. We had Indians getting paid to vote! Many, many different things, all election-changing.”

Trump zeroed in on large cities in Michigan and Pennsylvania, both of which he lost to Biden, that are home to many Black people and historically vote heavily Democratic. “Look, everyone knows that Detroit was so corrupt. Everyone knows that they literally beat up people there, they hurt people to get the vote watchers out, our vote watchers, Republican vote watchers,” he said. He added, “Philadelphia, highly corrupt in terms of elections. There were tremendous irregularities that went on there, including the fact that you had more votes than you had voters.”

He was still fixated on the debunked water main conspiracy in Fulton County, Georgia. “They say, ‘Water main break!,’ everyone leaves—everyone leaves—and then you have these people go in with two or three other people, all their people, run to the table where ballots are…this table which had a skirt on it, opened the skirt and took out the ballots and started stuffing the ballot boxes,” he said. “It was reported on every newscast.”

In his discussion of the “stolen” election, Trump grew more animated and specific about the long list of advisers and allies he considered disloyal.