Donald Trump sought to move past his historic criminal conviction on Friday and build momentum for his bid to return to the White House with fierce attacks on the judge who oversaw the case, the prosecution’s star witness and the criminal justice system as a whole.
Speaking from his namesake tower in Manhattan in a symbolic return to the campaign trail, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee delivered a message aimed squarely at his most loyal supporters. Defiant as ever, he insisted without evidence that the verdict was “rigged” and driven by politics.
“We’re going to fight,” Trump said from the atrium of Trump Tower, where he had descended his golden escalator to announce his 2016 campaign nine years ago next month. It was that campaign that led to the charges that made Trump the first former president and presumptive major party nominee in the nation’s history to be convicted of a crime.
A Manhattan jury on Thursday found Trump guilty of 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush-money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex.
While the guilty verdict has energized Trump’s base, fuelling millions of dollars in new campaign contributions, it’s unclear how the conviction and his rambling response will resonate with the kinds of voters who are likely to decide what is expected to be an extremely close November election. They include suburban women, independents and voters turned off by both candidates who remain on the fence.
CBC chief correspondent Adrienne Arsenault talks to David Frum about why he thinks Donald Trump’s conviction should have been linked to his role in the Capitol riots instead of hush-money and what it means for democracy in the U.S.
Trump cast himself as a martyr, suggesting that if this could happen to him, “They can do this to anyone.”
“I’m willing to do whatever I have to do to save our country and save our Constitution. I don’t mind,” he said, as he traded the aging lower Manhattan courthouse where he had spent much of the last two months for a backdrop of American flags, rose marble and brass.
“It’s a very unpleasant thing, to be honest,” he said. “But it’s a great, great honor.”
President Joe Biden, responding to the verdict at the White House, said the former president “was given every opportunity to defend himself” and blasted his…
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