Stand up for the facts!

Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy.
We need your help.

More Info

I would like to contribute

Elon Musk, with his son X Æ A-Xii, arrives on the dais with President-elect Donald Trump, at a rally ahead of the 60th Presidential Inauguration, Jan. 19, 2025, in Washington. (AP) Elon Musk, with his son X Æ A-Xii, arrives on the dais with President-elect Donald Trump, at a rally ahead of the 60th Presidential Inauguration, Jan. 19, 2025, in Washington. (AP)

Elon Musk, with his son X Æ A-Xii, arrives on the dais with President-elect Donald Trump, at a rally ahead of the 60th Presidential Inauguration, Jan. 19, 2025, in Washington. (AP)

Loreben Tuquero
By Loreben Tuquero January 21, 2025

Trump didn’t admit to rigging the election during his pre-inauguration rally

If Your Time is short

  • Parsing President Donald Trump’s words shows that he didn’t admit to rigging the 2024 election.

  • He spoke about how he will be president for the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Olympics because he lost the 2020 election, which he falsely claims was stolen.

President Donald Trump is back in the White House. But the day before his inauguration, he said things that made some people question his election victory anew.

Multiple social media users claimed that Trump admitted to rigging the 2024 election, citing two of his remarks during his Jan. 19 preinauguration rally in Washington. One of Trump’s statements involved Elon Musk, a billionaire who owns X and is Tesla’s CEO.

"Trump just admitted LIVE that the election was rigged and THAT is why he is President," one Jan. 19 Threads post read. The post shared video of Trump in which he said:

"They all came in on the Olympics and then I saw Gianni (Infantino), (president of FIFA, international soccer’s governing body) and we got the World Cup too and you know it's only because they rigged the election that I will be your president representing you there. You know, I got both of them. I got the Olympics and the World Cup, and I said, ‘You know, it's too bad. One was in 2026, the other was in 2028. I said, I won't be there, and I won’t be your president.’ But then they rigged the election and now we won so I'm going to be your president for the Olympics and for the World Cup."

Other posts sharing the claim referred to another portion of Trump’s remarks, in which he said: 

Sign up for PolitiFact texts

"But (Musk) did that and then he journeyed to Pennsylvania where he spent like a month and a half campaigning for me in Pennsylvania and he's a popular guy, and he was very effective. And he knows those computers better than anybody. All those computers, those vote-counting computers, and we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide so it was pretty good. It was pretty good. So, thank you to Elon."

These posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

Parsing Trump’s words shows he didn’t admit to rigging the 2024 election. PolitiFact contacted the Trump team but did not hear back.

Listening closely to the Trump’s quote about the Olympics, it appeared he was talking about the 2020 election. He was saying that if he had won the 2020 election, he couldn’t have served for a third term, and therefore wouldn’t be president during the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Olympics. But because he didn’t win the 2020 election, he could serve his second term from 2025 to 2029, a period including  both events.

Trump has long maintained the Pants on Fire claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent. And he repeated that stance during his Inauguration Day ceremonies.

But as PolitiFact has previously reported, that election’s outcome was verified over and over again. States and Congress certified the results. Trump and his allies lost more than 60 lawsuits. A group of conservatives who examined fraud and miscount claims by Trump and his allies concluded that they "failed to present evidence of fraud or inaccurate results significant enough to invalidate the results."

And Trump’s preinauguration comments about Musk referred to Musk’s significant efforts to campaign for Trump in Pennsylvania. Musk joined Trump onstage at an October rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, when Trump returned to the site where an assassin had targeted him in July. Musk also founded America PAC, a political action committee that ran canvassing operations in battleground states. And he opened a Pittsburgh campaign base dedicated to electing Trump.

Featured Fact-check

But there’s no proof Musk rigged the state’s election results in Trump’s favor.

Pennsylvania has multiple certified voting systems across its 67 counties. These systems produce voter-verifiable paper records and are not connected to the internet. These are tested publicly before every election. Only authorized elections personnel can access the voting systems.

Trump won Pennsylvania by a margin of less than 2%.

We rate the claim that these videos show Trump admitted to rigging the 2024 election False.

PolitiFact New York Writer Jill Terreri Ramos contributed to this report.

Our Sources

Threads post, Jan. 19, 2025

Instagram post, Jan. 19, 2025

Instagram post, Jan. 20, 2025

Instagram post, Jan. 20, 2025

Threads post, Jan. 19, 2025

PolitiFact, Fact-check: Trump previews Day 1 executive orders, repeats falsehoods at preinauguration rally, Jan. 19, 2025

C-SPAN, President-Elect Trump Holds Rally on Eve of Inauguration, Jan. 19, 2025

The Philadelphia Inquirer, Elon Musk is obsessed with delivering Pennsylvania for Donald Trump. Here’s what he’s doing., Oct. 11, 2024

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Voting Systems, accessed Jan. 21, 2025

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Election Security in Pennsylvania, accessed Jan. 21, 2025

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 2024 Presidential Election (Official Returns), accessed Jan. 21, 2025

PolitiFact, Trump’s new ‘evidence’ that Biden lost in 2020 is ridiculously wrong (and dusty). We reviewed it., Jan. 5, 2024

PolitiFact, Fact-checking President Donald Trump's Inauguration Day speeches, Jan. 20, 2025

PolitiFact, Joe Biden is right that more than 60 of Trump’s election lawsuits lacked merit, Jan. 8, 2021

The New York Times, Musk Is Going All In to Elect Trump, Oct. 11, 2024

Senator John Danforth, Benjamin Ginsberg, The Honorable Thomas B. Griffith, David Hoppe, The Honorable J. Michael Luttig, The Honorable Michael W. McConnell, The Honorable Theodore B. Olson, Senator Gordon H. Smith, Lost, Not Stolen, July 2022

The Daily Beast, Trump Makes Odd Remark About Elon Musk’s Familiarity With Pennsylvania Voting Machines, Jan. 20, 2025

Roll Call Factbase, Speech: Donald Trump Holds a Political Rally in Washington - January 19, 2025

Browse the Truth-O-Meter

More by Loreben Tuquero

Trump didn’t admit to rigging the election during his pre-inauguration rally

Support independent fact-checking.
Become a member!

In a world of wild talk and fake news, help us stand up for the facts.

Sign me up