WATCH: Trump says he was being sarcastic when he said he ‘lost by a whisker’ in 2020

In the ABC presidential debate Tuesday, former President Donald Trump was asked if he was admitting that his campaign lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden when he was quoted as saying his campaign “lost by a whisker.” Trump instead doubled down on his false assertion that he won the election.

“I did that sarcastically,” Trump said. “All you have to do is look at it and they should have sent it back to the legislatures for approval. I got almost 75 million votes, the most votes any sitting president has ever gotten. I was told if I got 63, which is what I got in 2016, you can’t be beaten.”

Pressed by the moderator about the election legal challenges he and his allies lost in court, Trump said it didn’t matter and that his focus was now on the 2024 election.

“I’ll show we have so many facts and statistics,” Trump said. “But you know what? That doesn’t matter because we have to solve the problem that we have right now. That’s old news and the problem that we have right now is we have a nation in decline and they have put it into decline. We have a nation that is dying.”

According to the latest PBS News/NPR/Marist poll, more than two-thirds of Americans say they will watch all or most of the debate. While many voters have already made up their minds, 14 percent of Americans say the debate will have a great impact on which candidate they choose.