WATCH The Stunning First 9 Minutes Of Kristen Welker’s Trump Interview That Were Edited Out Of Meet the Press

The stunning first 9 minutes and 44 seconds of Kristen Welker’s interview with ex-President Donald Trump were largely edited out of Meet the Press — but they’re an illustrative 9 minutes 44 seconds.

Welker and NBC News spent several days last week promoting the interview by dropping preview clip after preview clip — including exchanges in which Trump said that he never even wanted to “think about” pardoning himself while president and that he will definitely testify under oath, and another in which Welker took a stab at confronting Trump over his age — as well as more anodyne clips like his musings about the attractiveness of the “concept” of picking a woman to be his running mate and the contents of the letter he left for President Joe Biden in the Oval Office.

As soon as the announcement was made that Welker would be interviewing Trump and throughout the preview period, criticism grew about the decision and the format of the interview — so much so that NYT reporter Peter Baker addressed it on-air during the show.

Then on Sunday, the interview aired on Welker’s first turn as permanent moderator of Meet the Press, and turned out to be the blizzard of falsehoods, misleading statements, and evidence-free attacks that many predicted it would be.

Criticism followed, much of it focused on the falsehoods and Welker’s performance, of which CNN’s Oliver Darcy said “Welker seemed ill-equipped to handle Trump’s trademark bravado. Lacking any noticeable fire in her belly, she at times timidly tried to set the facts straight. But Welker lacked the necessary fervor and apparent grasp of the subject material the massive platform requires to effectively counter Trump.”

But the footage aired during Meet the Press didn’t tell the whole story — not even close. The full interview ran 78 minutes, the first 9-10 minutes of which vividly showed the challenge Welker faced, as she spent most of that tine trying to get Trump to “move on” from a lie that she repeatedly told him had been debunked.

Here’s just a taste of those 10 minutes:

FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP: The election was rigged. There’s no question about that. There’s so much proof on it. Even if you go to the more modern-day proof with the — they call it Twitter Files, FBI and Twitter, or you take a look at the Amazon stuff or the Google stuff, or you take a look at “2,000 Mules,” you take a look at all of the ballot stuffing that’s on tape, you take a look at the fact that the legislatures didn’t approve a lot of the things that were done in the elections, and they had to approve. And we could go on forever. We could go on forever. But, but no. I want somebody that’s going to be strong, respected, tough, and fair.

KRISTEN WELKER: Just to go back to a couple of the points you said, the ballot stuffing. That’s something that’s been debunked.

FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP: It hasn’t been debunked. It’s on camera.

KRISTEN WELKER: As you know, let’s — But I do want to keep moving forward.

FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, but, Kristen, it’s on camera. Hundreds — even thousands and thousands of people. You take a look. True the Vote. Take a look. It’s on camera. They have thousands of —

KRISTEN WELKER: But Mr. President, you know Republican officials and top law enforcement officials, they have told you that that’s debunked.

FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP: I know, but, Kristen, you can’t say — They have thousands of pictures of people — I know you have to say that for your network, but you shouldn’t say it, because that’s the problem.

KRISTEN WELKER: But, Mr. President–

FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP: The news has lost such power.

KRISTEN WELKER: Let’s stay on track, though, Mr. President. Let’s stay on track with these questions —

FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP: No, but you’re saying– It hasn’t. We have thousands of essentially motion pictures of people stuffing the ballot boxes. Tens of thousands.

KRISTEN WELKER: But, Mr. President, they’re not stuffing the ballot boxes. And you’ve been told that by your top law enforcement officials. But let’s stay on track, because we have so much ground to cover. We have policy ground to cover, Mr. President.

It went on for several more minutes like that, with Welker repeatedly trying to close the matter by declaring the lies “debunked” and Trump continuing to insist that the debunkings were, in fact, the lies. Viewers of the program only saw a fraction of these exchanges.

Watch above via NBC’s Meet the Press and watch the full interview here.