When it comes to challenging election results, Trump says to 'follow your heart'

Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he has no regrets about challenging the 2020 election results and asserted that when it comes to “straightening out elections," it’s important to "follow your heart."

"No, it would have been a terrible thing because you have to get the election straightened out. You have to have fair and free elections," Trump said when asked if he wished he had accepted Joe Biden's win in 2020 during an interview with NBC affiliate WGAL in Pennsylvania.

"And if you don’t, you should always have the right to challenge them," Trump added. "If you couldn’t challenge elections, you wouldn’t even have a democracy. You wouldn’t have elections anymore. You have to do what’s — you actually have to follow your heart."

Trump frequently airs his election grievances during campaign rallies and has continued to wrongly insist that he won the 2020 election. He has championed the cause of his supporters who challenged those election results and stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, saying he will "absolutely" consider pardoning them.

In a recent interview with Time, Trump said he would have trouble hiring anyone who believes Biden won in 2020: “I wouldn’t feel good about it.”

Last week, Trump also wouldn’t commit to accepting the upcoming 2024 election results — a stance shared by many of his supporters.

“If everything’s honest, I’ll gladly accept the results. I don’t change on that,” Trump said in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "If it's not, you have to fight for the right of the country."

In his remarks to WGAL Tuesday, Trump also compared the Jan. 6 riot to the pro-Palestinian campus protests — insisting that the riot, where multiple people died and about 140 police officers