President Donald Trump brushed off a reporter as “rotten” on Wednesday after she challenged his claims about fraud in the 2020 election and reminded him that his own former attorney general said there was no widespread evidence of it.
The tense exchange happened while Trump was speaking with reporters outside the White House. PBS correspondent Liz Landers asked him about a new Development involving the FBI and election records connected to the 2020 presidential race. “Sir, in Arizona, why did the FBI seize election records in that state?” Landers asked Trump on Wednesday.
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The question came after reports that the FBI had issued a grand jury subpoena for Arizona election records as part of an inquiry tied to the 2020 election results. Federal investigators have also recently seized records in Georgia related to the same election.
Trump responded by suggesting the investigation itself pointed to problems with the vote. “Well, they probably thought the election was rigged, right?” Trump said.
Landers pushed back, pointing out that Trump’s own attorney general at the time, Bill Barr, publicly said there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could have changed the outcome of the election. “It wasn’t rigged, though,” Landers told the president.
Trump immediately challenged her. “Oh, really? Who — how do you know?” he asked. Landers reminded him of Barr’s earlier statements.
“Your own attorney general in 2020 said that there was not measurable voter fraud to change the outcome of the election,” Landers said. Trump remained firm in his belief.
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“You don’t think it was rigged? I think it was rigged!” he said. Landers pressed further. “Sir, where’s the evidence of that?” she asked. That question appeared to irritate the president.
“If you think it wasn’t rigged, you’re a rotten reporter!” Trump said before turning away and moving on to other questions. Trump had previously reacted positively to the news about the Arizona investigation, calling it “great” in a post on Truth Social.
His long-running feud with Barr has been tied closely to the former attorney general’s stance on election fraud claims. After the 2020 election, Barr publicly said that the Justice Department had not found evidence of fraud on a scale that would have changed the result.
Barr later revealed that he confronted Trump directly about the claims. In a 2022 interview with NBC News, Barr said he told Trump the allegations were “bulls**t” and warned him that members of his team were spreading false information. According to Barr, Trump became furious during that conversation.
Despite their disagreements, Barr still endorsed Trump during the 2024 presidential race. Trump acknowledged the endorsement at the time, but not without taking a jab at the former attorney general.
“Wow! Former A.G. Bill Barr, who let a lot of great people down by not investigating Voter Fraud in our Country, has just Endorsed me for President despite the fact that I called him ‘Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy’ (New York Post!),” Trump posted to Truth Social at the time. “Based on the fact that I greatly appreciate his wholehearted Endorsement, I am removing the word ‘Lethargic’ from my statement.”