Former President Donald Trump, who never formally conceded the 2020 election to President Joe Biden, will "give a concession speech" belatedly "in the form of a trial," according to former MSNBC host Chris Matthews, Breitbart reported.
That claim from Matthews was made in reference to the latest criminal indictment against Trump from Special Counsel Jack Smith in relation to Trump's efforts to challenge the disputed 2020 election results and delay the Jan. 6 congressional certification of those results that he refused to accept.
Matthews, the former host of "Hardball" on MSNBC, made an appearance Tuesday on the network's "Morning Joe" show and was asked to weigh in on recent developments with regard to the latest criminal indictment against former President Trump.
"You know, our great pride is that we’ve had clean elections. We’ve had people who conceded defeat at the end of them," Matthews said in reference to how the aftermath of elections in the United States differs from countries in Africa and South America.
"In fact, in the entire age of television, going back to Adlai Stevenson when we first got TVs at home, the defeated candidate went on television and said he lost -- or she lost, with Hillary Clinton," he continued.
"That’s why we need this trial in court," Matthews insisted. "You can call Jack Smith 'deranged,' make fun of him the way you did of Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio, and treat him like a clown act, but once this guy is in court with you and basically has the law on his side and operates with procedure, you’re going to look like the bad guy."
"The beauty of this is we’re going to have a concession speech basically on television in the form of a trial," he added. "And I think that’s something Trump is scared to death of, an actual -- where he sits in the defendant’s booth, in that desk, and he has to act like a defendant in a criminal case."
The conversation shifted to other Republicans and how reticent most are to acknowledge that former President Trump lost the 2020 election, and Matthews said of them, "These guys have an oath too."
"I do think this idea of, okay, you're Donald Trump -- assume you can imagine that -- you're watching election reports coming in from Arizona and Fox tells you you lost there, and then you look at Wisconsin, and then you find out they're 12,000 short in Georgia," he continued. "You know, real numbers. You're facing real numbers like you did in '16. This time they're against you. It's close. As Jefferson said, if it's one vote, it still matters. You've got to accept the loss."
"In real-time, he was facing reality," Matthews said of Trump. "And in court, they can bring that to the table and I think the judge will hear that. It's a tough judge in this case. I think she's going to insist on hearing the truth about what Trump did to the country. He lied. He lied and said, 'I won,' knowing he didn't have any information to that effect."
"And I think that's what we have to count on here, that those people in the Republican Party that are not with Trump right now, will honestly see this as an honest case," Matthews noted and went on to recall how GOP critiques of Washington D.C. had evolved from being "no good" to being the "Deep State" to now being entirely "corrupt."
"This trial is going to be held in Washington, and we have to face the reality that some people aren't going to believe it, because we've come this far," he added in reference to the perception of many Republicans that the prosecution of Trump is politically motivated.
Indeed, a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll revealed that a plurality of Americans, 49 percent, believe the 2020 election/Jan. 6 charges against Trump are politically motivated, and that figure was substantially higher with regard to Special Counsel Smith's prosecution of Trump over his retention of classified documents, as a Quinnipiac poll in June found that 62 percent of all Americans believed that those charges were motivated by political considerations.
