CNN’s Dana Bash said Thursday that President Donald Trump was going ahead with lawsuits in an effort to get “payback.”
Bash explained to anchor Anderson Cooper that her sources had told her that Trump was aware that the lawsuits and recounts would not ultimately win him the election but that he was intentionally throwing up roadblocks in the same way that he felt Democrats had done to him after he won in 2016. (RELATED: ‘I Don’t Think They Train To Take A Bullet From The President’: Dana Bash Says Trump Put Secret Service At Risk)
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“Dana, your reporting is that President Trump knows he’s lost but is delaying the inevitable out of revenge. Explain what you’ve heard,” Cooper prompted.
Bash began by saying that Trump, according to her sources, knew “in his heart of hearts” that he would not win.
“We’ve heard that from other sources as well,” she continued. “But what this source added was that what the president is saying, pretty explicitly, is he feels that the Democrats, when the president won in 2016, tried to make his win illegitimate by the Russia investigation, the dossier and everything that went along with it. And so he is using their playbook. That’s — that’s his thinking.”
“And he’s, you know, I use the word payback,” Bash added, saying that the president’s refusal to concede was in part to deny President-elect Joe Biden access to transition funds and briefings. She also argued that his insistence on suggesting that the election was fraudulent was destructive.
Cooper interjected then, asking how the president viewed his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani after several lawsuits had been rejected.
“The president wants somebody out there fighting for him. And the president wants somebody out there going down whatever rabbit hole they feel comfortable doing,” Bash replied, suggesting that Giuliani was one of the few who was still willing to defend the president. “Other lawyers who have a lot more credibility with election law are nowhere to be found, and there’s a reason for that, Anderson.”