In a series of media appearances in recent days, former President Donald Trump continued to push the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen from him, arguing he had “every right” to interfere with the process after losing to President Joe Biden.

“It's so crazy that my poll numbers go up. Whoever heard – you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election where you have every right to do it – you get indicted and your poll numbers go up?” Trump said in an interview with Fox News’ Mark Levin that aired on Sunday.  

Trump is currently under federal indictment for his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including attempts at pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to intervene, which culminated in a mob of his supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden's win. Special counsel Jack Smith filed a superseding indictment last week, tailoring the four criminal charges after the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity. In a court filing on Tuesday, Trump said he intends for his attorneys to enter a non guilty plea on his behalf. 

Trump, speaking with Levin on the same day as the new indictment became public, called Smith’s prosecution of him “the worst case of election interference that anyone’s ever seen,” baselessly claiming the Biden administration and the Department of Justice “put people in” the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney’s office and the New York state attorney general’s office.

In Georgia, Trump faces criminal charges for his effort to overturn the 2020 election in that state and New York Attorney General Letitia James has fought many battles with Trump, including securing a $454 million civil fraud judgment against the former president and his businesses earlier this year. Trump is appealing the ruling and has denied wrongdoing across his four criminal trials and numerous civil suits. 

“Everything Donald Trump has promised on the campaign trail – from ‘terminating’ the Constitution, to imprisoning his political opponents and promising to rule as a dictator on ‘day one’ – makes it clear that he believes he is above the law. Now, Trump is claiming he had ‘every right’ to interfere in the 2020 election,” Harris campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in a statement. “He did not.”

In an interview with MIT researcher and right-wing podcaster Lex Fridman published on Tuesday, Trump conceded he “lost by a whisker” in 2020. After years of pushing the lie that he won the 2020 election, Trump has been more willing to admit he lost in recent months. In an August interview with Spectrum News, he stopped himself from falsely claiming he won Wisconsin in 2020, settling for saying he “did really well last time.”

But in the Fridman interview, Trump continued to falsely insist the “election was a fraud” and that non-citizens were voting, arguing that the U.S. should require “proof of citizenship” at voting locations. 

“I think the fraud was on the other side. I think the election was a fraud. And many people felt it was that and they wanted answers. And when you can’t challenge an election, you have to be able to challenge it, otherwise it’s going to get worse, not better,” Trump said.

When pressed by Fridman – who has interviewed right-wing billionaire Elon Musk and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, among others – that his claims of election fraud “is the thing that bothers people,” Trump said “well, I don’t focus on the past. I focus on the future.”

Trump’s allies have long pushed him to stop relitigating the 2020 election and embrace a more positive, forward-looking message on the campaign trail, but he has shown little interest. He frequently praises and promises pardons to the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, referring to those imprisoned for their crimes as “hostages” and “political prisoners.”

Around 900 people have pleaded guilty to crimes connected to that day, including 146 who pleaded guilty to felony federal charges of assaulting law enforcement officers, according to the Justice Department. More than 180 people have been found guilty at trial, including key members and leaders of a pro-Trump militia and street gang, some of whom have received decades in prison. 

And he has continued to push lies about the 2020 election, including telling TV personality Phil McGraw last week that he would win deep-blue California if “an honest vote counter” tallied the ballots there, with Trump falsely claiming that Democrats in California voted multiple times. Trump lost California by five million votes in 2020.

His continued insistence on pushing false claims of election fraud has kept some Republicans from backing him, including Pence. But, like Pence, most of the dissenters within his own party are no longer in power. Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, running for a Senate seat in his state, released an ad on Tuesday that uses clips of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, describing it as a “horror” and Hogan as an “early critic of Trump.”  And former Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, who left office in 2023, told CNBC on Tuesday that he wouldn’t vote for Trump after voting for him in 2016 and 2020.

“I voted for Donald Trump twice,” Toomey said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday morning. “But when you lose an election and you try to overturn the results so you can stay in power, you lose me at that point.”