Former President Donald Trump appeared in a Manhattan, New York, courtroom on Tuesday for his arraignment on 34 criminal counts related to falsifying business records.
After pleading not guilty to the charges against him, he returned to his residence at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida where he addressed the situation in greater detail.
Echoing the prevailing public sentiment that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation was politically motivated, the former president asserted that the case “was brought only to interfere with the upcoming 2024 election and it should be dropped immediately.”
Trump went on to compare U.S. elections to “those of a third-world country,” claiming that the indictment against him would only cause more distrust of the system.
“This is a guy campaigning,” he said of Bragg. “You want to get President Trump at any cost, and this before he knew anything about me. He didn’t know a thing about me. He was campaigning.”
The former president, whose 2024 White House bid has gained popularity since news of the indictment broke, cited the fact that even some of his rivals have expressed concern about the nature of the case against him.
'FLIMSY': DeSantis weighs in on Manhattan DA Bragg's Trump indictment. https://t.co/5DdlkCZBDX pic.twitter.com/zg5OoECx50
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 3, 2023
“Everybody, even people that aren’t big fans, have said that,” Trump added. “They said this is not the right thing to do. It’s an insult to our country as the world is already laughing at us.”
He shared a similarly dim view of “racist” District Attorney Fani Willis in Fulton County, Georgia, who is investigating Trump on an unrelated matter.
His remarks on Tuesday evening also touched on the perceived damage that the Biden administration has done to the nation — including a botched withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2021 that he called the “most embarrassing time in our country’s history.”
Trump accused his successor and the Democratic Party in general of weakening America on multiple fronts, including “trying to indoctrinate everyone” in the military, decimating the economy, and ushering in a nationwide crime wave.
Pivoting to his own presidential campaign, he said that his policies would prioritize energy independence and result in the U.S. becoming “dominant within six months, more than any other nation times two.”
