Eh, he's lightly alluded to that before. But then his cult start freaking out or his ego takes a ding. And then it's back to the vociferous "stolen election" bullshit.
No. He always knew it. That was part of the Jan 6 commission findings. That he appears to be altering his past statements to solicit support from a particular audience is not that notable, there are lots of examples.
I'm a Free Thinking Republican and this is ONLY happening because the Deep State is trying to Kill Trump as demonstrated by sending a Child Assassin to MISS on Purpose to send a message to Trump because they're scared of Him. That's LITERALLY the ONLY reason why he's saying this! I think for Myself!
In a podcast interview with Russian American computer scientist Lex Fridman that aired Tuesday, Trump acknowledged that he lost the presidential election “by a whisker.” (You can check out Trump’s comments around the 11:10 mark.) The surprising remarks follow a similar comment by Trump at a Moms for Liberty conference last week, saying Biden “beat us by a whisker”—before baselessly claiming that Democrats “used Covid to cheat.” At a press conference at the southern border last month, Trump said that he came up “just a little bit short” in the last election.
So I suspect in his mind, he still only "lost" because of the millions of illegal immigrants voting or some similar BS. I.e. the media is being too optimistic about this guy's POV and mental state.
Edit: So I had seen clips and read lots of articles about what Trump said on January 6th, but I had never read the transcript. So I thought, why not? Let's see it without anyone else telling me what it says. Holy shit, it was so much worse than I thought.
Donald Trump tweets: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”
Or do you mean the video he posted a few hours later where he continued to insist the election was 'stolen'
"I know your pain. I know your hurt," he said. "We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now."