‘I’d go home, start building buildings’: Trump claims he’d be ‘OK’ with losing to Biden ‘fairly’

Donald Trump for the first time on Saturday said he would have been OK if he lost the 2020 election fairly as he spoke to thousands of supporters at an election integrity event in Phoenix.

‘I’ve got to tell you, I’ve got to say it. I’ve never said it before, but I’ve always thought it – If I lost the election, I’m OK with that. I’m OK with it. Seriously,’ the former president said.

‘If we lost the election, we lose an election,’ he continued.

‘I’ll go home. I’ll start building buildings. I’ll do something. I’ll keep myself busy. But you know what, if we lost the election – we know when we lose.’

The former president, however, said he knows that he didn’t lose and therefore wants an investigation that proves so.

‘This election was rigged,’ he claimed. ‘And they know it.’

Trump added: ‘You know when you win and when you lose’

‘If I lost this election, I could handle it pretty easily,’ he said. ‘When they steal if from you and rig it, that’s not easy and we have to fight. We have no choice. We have to fight.’

He questioned why Democrats – and some Republican defectors – don’t want an audit just to prove that they won fair and square.

‘I’ve got to tell you, I’ve got to say it. I’ve never said it before, but I’ve always thought it – If I lost the election, I’m OK with that,’ Trump said. ‘If we lost the election, we lose an election. I’ll go home. I’ll start building buildings. I’ll do something. I’ll keep myself busy’

Trump also went through a list of his greatest hits from the last year lamenting the validity and integrity of the 20202 election.

‘We won, we really did,’ Trump insisted. ‘Not me, we all won.’

‘Everyone here understands the 2020 election was a total disgrace. It was the most corrupt–’ he said, but was cut off by cheers and chants from the audience of around 5,000.

‘You’re not going to have a future in 22 or 24 if you don’t find out how they cheated with hundreds of thousands, and even millions of votes because you won’t win anything,’ Trump said, referencing the next two big election years.

The ‘Protect Our Elections’ event was hosted by Turning Point Action, which is a group aimed at de-seating Democratic politicians across the country.

Maricopa County has been at ground zero in the last three months for Trump’s recount efforts.

Trump spoke on Saturday to thousands of his supporters at Arizona Federal Theater, where nearly all seats were occupied, minus a small roped-off section behind the media risers.

The former president said the event on Saturday is to ‘show our support for election integrity and the brave and irreverent warriors in the Arizona State Senate.’

The Arizona State Senate, which has a Republican majority, ordered the audit earlier this year.

The two opening acts for Trump were Congressmen Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, who respectively represent Arizona’s 4th and 5th districts in the U.S. House.

Biggs told the crowd that the first marshal informed him the theater was at maximum capacity. He made fun of President Joe Biden’s CNN town hall in Cincinnati, Ohio last week where about 300 people were in attendance.

Donald Trumptook stage at a Turning Point Action ‘Protect our Elections’ rally in Phoenix, Arizona on Saturday

While Gosar spoke, he introduced Ashli Babbitt’s mom, who was attending the rally.

Babbitt, 35, was killed on January 6, 2021 by a Capitol Police Officer who shot her as she attempted to break through the House chamber doors with a group of rioters who stormed the complex in an attempt to stop Congress for certifying the election results for Biden.

‘Who killed Ashli Babbitt?’ Gosar questioned, pleading, ‘I want you to hold your applause for one second,’ before introducing his guest.

The late Air Force veteran’s mother was holding a poster with an image of Babbitt in front of the Capitol and donning a shirt that read ‘Justice for Ashli’. She was joined by another woman, who remained unidentified, but was holding up a poster with Babbitt’s face on it.

It did not appear any rally attendees were wearing face coverings, but several were wearing comically large red foam ‘Make America Great Again’ hats.

The lack of masks comes as COVID-19 cases are surging across the country with the emergence of the Delta variant, and some cities are reimposing mask mandates indoors on even vaccinated individuals.

Phoenix has a population of 1.63 million people and it’s current rolling 7-day average of new cases sits at 1,113. Los Angeles, one of the biggest areas spiking with COVID-19 right now, has a rolling average of 2,104 new cases per day.

Kari Lake, who was the crowd favorite gubernatorial candidate of the night, said if elected, she will issue pardons for businesses who decided to stay open amid shut downs and for those who are prosecuted for violating federal mask mandates.

The governorship in Arizona is wide open for the taking in 2022 as Republican Governor Doug Ducey comes to the end of his second and final term. Arizona law states governors are limited to eight years serving – or two consecutive four-year terms.

Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Ducey, who has broken with the former president’s on his fraud claims. Ducey, Trump says, is to blame for Arizona not already overturning the election results.

In an April statement, Trump said: ‘Governor Doug Ducey of Arizona, one of the worst Governors in America, and the second worst Republican Governor in America, is refusing to provide security for the American Patriots who are hand counting the Rigged 2020 Arizona Election Ballots.’

More recently, on Friday, Trump lauded that Ducey will not run to represent Arizona in the Senate as current Democratic Senator Mark Kelly comes up for reelection.

‘Good news!’ Trump wrote. ‘RINO Governor Doug Ducey of Arizona has restated the fact that he is not running for the United States Senate. It would not matter, however, because he could not get the nomination after failing to perform on the Voter Fraud in Arizona. Also, there is no way he would get my endorsement, which means, his aspirations would be permanently put to rest anyway.’

He added: ‘Again, thank you to our brave Republicans in the Arizona State Senate for their bravery in putting forward the Forensic Audit. Everybody is anxiously awaiting the result!’

One Republican vying to take Kelly’s seat was met with a huge round of applause when he said ahead of Trump’s remarks: ‘Put Mark Kelly back in space with [Jeff] Bezos.’

Kelly, a former astronaut, flipped the seat blue after defeating incumbent Republican Martha McSally in a special election after she took over in the interim following Senator John McCain’s death.

Trump repeated his claims of widespread voter fraud throughout the evening as he spoke to his supporters of a rigged election.

‘You can’t tell me that President Trump didn’t win, because he ran through the Democrats like crap through a goose,’ Arizona State Representative Walter Blackman said in an awkward simile.

Blackman then led the room in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Meanwhile, the Arizona recount audit was thrown into chaos last week.

Ken Bennett, a former Arizona secretary of state and liaison to the state Senate for the recount, lost privileges to the building where the effort is taking place, according to recent reports.

The rally Saturday comes after a dramatic turn of events Friday when Ken Bennett, who was acting as the liaison to the Arizona Senate on the election audit, was banned  from the building where the recount is taking place

The once-president of the state Senate was the only person involved with the recount in Maricopa with experience in elections.

Previously, he was referred to as the ‘director’ of the recount, but the Arizona Republic reported on Friday Bennett was not allowed in the state fairgrounds building where the audit is happening.

It comes after he shared data with outside critics from an ongoing ballot recount.

The Arizona State Senate, which is majority Republican, has paid $150,000 of the $9 million the election audit is reportedly costing. The state has a GOP trifecta, meaning the governor is a Republican and the House and Senate have a Republican majority.

Now that Bennett, the Senate’s liaison for the recount, has been banned, it has become unclear who is in charge of the review, which was ordered by the Arizona State Senate.

Those senators in the state are also supposed to be overseeing the recount.

Arizona is a swing state that Trump lost to Biden in 2020 by just 0.3 per cent. He claims he only lost the state because of widespread fraud in Maricopa County, where he earned 995,665 votes to Biden’s 1,040,774, according to the official ballot count from the state.

But the former president’s most staunch supporters, several thousand of whom are in attendance at Saturday’s rally, claim a lack of voter integrity is to blame for Biden beating Trump.

Bennett (right) helps move 2020 presidential ballots as the Maricopa County recount ensued on May 1, 2021

Cyber Ninjas was hired by the Arizona State Senate for the election audit. Here contractors examine and recount 2020 ballots at Veterans Memorial Coliseum on May 1 in Phoenix

Trump has insisted since he lost the election in November that Biden only won because Democrats used pandemic-era expanded mail-in voting laws to illegally sway the election in swing states.

Specifically he has aimed his attention at Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania, the three states that were the subject of GOP lawmakers’ objections to the election results during the January 6, 2021 certification of the Electoral College results.

Trump took the stage around 3:55 p.m. MST to speak with a few thousand of his supporters who also feel the election was stolen. He was almost an hour late. 

A retired Army soldier and now Uber driver told DailyMail.com on Friday that there are a lot of Republicans in the area who are willing to fight to overturn the election results for Trump – even just in an effort to make sure the state stays red.

Attendees are decked out in pro-America and pro-Trump swag.

One group held up a giant flag that said ‘Trump Won’ inside the theatre, and another group had Trump’s face on the American flag with the words ‘I’ll be back’.  

Trump often sends statements from his Save America Political Action Committee email railing against the Arizona results and those he feels are trying to prevent the recount.

Most recently, he wrote on Thursday Arizona State Senator Paul Boyer is trying to prevent the evidence from coming out from the audit.

Trump supporters hold up a sign insisting ‘Trump Won’ before the former president arrives for his remarks on Saturday, July 24, 2021

‘Republican Arizona State Senator Paul Boyer, a RINO if there ever was one, is doing everything in his power to hold up the damning Forensic Audit of Maricopa County,’ Trump wrote. ‘The people of Arizona are demanding it.’

‘All we demand is Voter Integrity!’ he insisted, before stopping short of endorsing Former Arizona House of Representatives member Anthony Kern, who is running against Boyer.

Arizona’s Senate brought in Cyber Ninjas in May to conduct a third recount audit, after two other election audits found no evidence of widespread voter fraud.