POLITICS
Key moments of Donald Trump’s speech at Mar-a-Lago
The elephant in the rather large hall was mostly ignored and there can’t be a larger elephant than a potential prison sentence for a former US president.
Donald Trump’s sensational arraignment was followed by a swift departure from New York back to Florida. Once touched down, the former president returned to his Mar-a-Lago villa to give a speech which many believed would rail against the charges levied against him.
Instead, watchers got a run-of-the-mill campaign speech with only fleeting mentions of the looming trial.
CNN cut away from the speech while MSNBC did not broadcast it.
“This is basically a campaign speech in which he is repeating his same lies and allegations against his perceived enemies,” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said. “He’s just giving his normal list of grievances. We don’t consider that necessarily newsworthy and there is a cost to us as a news organization of knowingly broadcasting untrue things.”
So what did Trump say?
He began by denying his guilt and arguing that his opponents “seek to destroy” the nation.
Much of the speech was consumed with his feeling of victimhood, that the establishment is against him, that Hunter Biden’s laptop is being supposedly ignored, that Jewish billionaire George Soros is plotting against him. The usual right-wing talking points, really.
What was most interestingly ignored was large references to the criminal case being undertaken by the Manhattan District Attorney. Probably under the advice of lawyers, there was little mention of the trial except at a couple of points.
Trump called justice Juan Merchan, who will preside over the trial, a “Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife whose daughter worked for Kamala Harris.”
At another moment he attacked the reputation of the District Attorney overseeing the case.
“The real criminal is the district attorney because he illegally leaked,” Trump said about Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg.
Trump also sounded confident when discussing his chances of beating the charges.
“Every single pundit and legal analyst said there is no case,” Trump told the crowd.
He said that his lawyers told him “there’s nothing here, they’re not even saying what you did.”