Former President Donald J. Trump continued to liken himself to the Russian opposition chief Aleksei A. Navalny throughout a city corridor in South Carolina on Tuesday, at one level straight evaluating a civil fraud judgment in opposition to him to the case of an anticorruption activist who died in a Russian jail final week.
Midway by way of the city corridor, the host, Fox Information’s Laura Ingraham, requested Mr. Trump how he would give you the $450 million penalty issued by a New York decide final week.
“It’s a type of — Navalny,” Mr. Trump mentioned. “It’s a type of communism or fascism.”
The comment got here after a chronic dialogue by which Mr. Trump continued to recommend that his authorized travails had been in some way equal to these of Mr. Navalny, a staunch opponent of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia who was politically persecuted and imprisoned on expenses that supporters believed had been fabricated in an try and silence him.
Mr. Trump didn’t particularly handle Mr. Navalny’s dying till Monday, when he posted on social media that the scenario was paying homage to his authorized issues. The previous president faces 4 felony circumstances, all of which he has attributed to President Biden, though Mr. Biden has no oversight over them.
Throughout the city corridor, Ms. Ingraham requested Mr. Trump to broaden on these feedback. The previous president recommended Mr. Navalny for his braveness, calling his dying “very unhappy” and saying that Mr. Navalny “was a really courageous man.” He additionally expressed his perception that Mr. Navalny — who returned to Russia in 2021 from Germany, the place he had been recovering from being poisoned — would have been higher served by “staying away and speaking from exterior of the nation.”
However Mr. Trump then mentioned that what had occurred to Mr. Navalny was taking place “in our nation too.” He went on to say his 4 indictments, which he mentioned had been “all due to the truth that I’m in politics.”
Ms. Ingraham then adopted up by asking Mr. Trump if he seen himself as a “potential political prisoner.” Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly with out proof claimed that the felony circumstances in opposition to him are a part of a plot to maintain him from successful a second time period, appeared to affirm her.
“If I had been dropping within the polls, they wouldn’t even be speaking about me,” Mr. Trump mentioned.
Nonetheless, Mr. Trump didn’t condemn Mr. Putin, who has drawn widespread condemnation and hypothesis from officers, together with Mr. Biden, that he or the Russian authorities could have had a hand in Mr. Navalny’s dying.
Throughout the city corridor, he praised Russia’s navy, which is invading Ukraine, for its prowess.
“You’re actually up in opposition to the struggle machine in Russia,” Mr. Trump mentioned. “Russia, what did they do? They defeated Hitler, they defeated Napoleon. Yeah, they’re a struggle machine.”
Mr. Trump has opposed offering extra navy support to Ukraine, and he has vowed to finish the struggle if elected president, although he’s imprecise on the main points apart from citing his relationship with Mr. Putin.
When requested by Ms. Ingraham about his opposition to supporting Ukraine, Mr. Trump once more insisted the invasion wouldn’t have occurred if he had received re-election in 2020 after which mentioned that he would encourage European leaders to offer extra support to Ukraine.
