2024
ELECTIONS
Trump calls his civil fraud verdict a ‘form of
Navalny’
The former president compared his own legal
entanglements to the death of the Russian opposition leader.
By ALEX
ISENSTADT and MERIDITH MCGRAW
02/20/2024
09:14 PM EST
Former
President Donald Trump likened the $355 million judgment against him in a New
York civil trial to the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny
during a Fox News town hall on Tuesday evening.
“It is a
form of Navalny. It is a form of communism or fascism,” he said, before going
on to attack the judge in the case, Arthur Engoron, who he called a “nut job.”
Trump
compared himself to Navalny, the outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir
Putin, who died in prison on Friday, on several occasions during the event.
Earlier in the town hall, Trump praised Navalny as a “very brave guy” because
he chose to return to Russia, where he had been jailed since 2021, though Trump
said he “probably would have been a lot better off staying away and talking
from outside.”
“People
thought that could happen and it did happen,” Trump said, referring to
Navalny’s death. “And it’s a horrible thing.”
Asked about
outrage over Navalny’s death, Trump said, “It’s happening here.” He said his
indictments are “all because of the fact that I’m in politics.”
Trump
refrained from blaming Putin for the death, as President Joe Biden and former
U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Trump’s sole remaining credible primary opponent,
have done.
Trump’s
remarks amounted to a doubling down on his controversial post on Truth Social
on Monday that “the sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more
aware of what is happening in our Country.”
Haley, the
former South Carolina governor, has been hammering Trump on Russia in the days
following Navalny’s death. In an interview earlier on Fox on Tuesday, she
called Navalny “a hero who challenged Putin, lost his life because of it.”
“This is on
the heels of Trump saying that he would encourage Putin to invade any NATO
countries that didn’t pull their weight,” she said. Rather than criticizing
Putin, she said of Trump, “He’s gonna compare himself to Navalny, and the
victim that he is in his court cases?”
Then, as
Trump’s town hall aired, Haley took to X, formerly Twitter, saying the
comparison is “ not America First. That’s the kind of
garbage you hear from liberals.”
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