Trump didn’t say he became president because the 2024 election was ‘rigged’

If fact-checkers were referees, we might show a yellow card over social media posts that claim to show President Donald Trump confessing to rigging the 2024 election as he talked about the World Cup.

A March 9 Instagram post with more than 15,500 likes said, “Yesterday, March 7th 2025, here is Trump saying verbatim ‘They rigged the election, and I became President.’ PLEASE SHARE THIS.”

A video attached to the post — which originated as an X post that had tallied nearly 8 million views on that platform by March 10 — showed Trump seated in the Oval Office speaking as a man stood nearby.

“It was so sad, because I said, ‘Can you imagine I’m not going to be president, and that’s too bad,’” Trump said in the clip. “And then what happened is they rigged the election, and I became president. So that was a good thing, that was a good thing. That was quite a … quite an achievement for both of us, so I’ll be president during the World Cup, and during the Olympics…”

We found other social media posts sharing the video along with similar claims that it showed Trump confessing to taking office following a fraudulent election. A March 9 TikTok video said, “I am losing count..Is this the 3rd or 4th time he’s admitting to rigging the election?”

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.)

The video shared in the posts correctly shows Trump’s words, but it’s a clip of a longer video that shows Trump’s comments were removed from their original context.

(Screenshot from Instagram)

Trump was speaking in the Oval Office March 7 alongside FIFA President Gianni Infantino as they announced a White House task force that will oversee preparations for the 2025 Club World Cup and the 2026 World Cup. 

The U.S. in June will host the Club World Cup, a 32-team tournament in which top professional teams compete. And in the summer of 2026, the U.S., Canada and Mexico will host the World Cup tournament, in which 48 national teams compete. The three nations in 2018 won a joint bid to host the international soccer event across 16 North American cities.

Trump was referring to that successful 2018 bid when he made the Oval Office remarks featured in these social media claims. Trump didn’t say the 2024 election was rigged in his favor. He was talking about the 2020 presidential election that he lost; he has repeatedly and falsely claimed it was “rigged” against him.

(C-SPAN video)

In the full, original video, it’s clear that Trump was noting that he wouldn’t have been president during the 2026 World Cup if he had won in 2020. His comments came in response to Infantino’s remarks about the logistics of coordinating a massive event that involves selling 10 million tickets. Starting at the 2:46 mark, Trump said:

“I love what he said, like three Super Bowls a day for a month. That’s what it is. That’s really amazing when you think of it. I’ve never heard that expression. That’s a lot. When, you know, when we made this, it was made during my term, my first term, and it was so sad, because I said, ‘Can you imagine, I’m not going to be president, and that’s too bad.’ And what happened is, they rigged the election, and I became president. So that was a good thing. It was a good thing. It was quite a … quite an achievement for both of us. So I’ll be president during the World Cup and during the Olympics which we were very instrumental in getting.”

It’s not the first time Trump’s words about the 2026 World Cup have been taken out of context to make false claims he admitted rigging the election. Similar claims followed Trump’s Jan. 19 comments during a pre-inauguration rally. 

We rate the claim this video shows Trump admitting the 2024 election was “rigged” False.