Donald Trump declared that his litany of legal woes were little more than “Stalinist show trials” in a rambling, meandering speech at CPAC on Saturday.
“The Stalinist show trials being carried out at Joe Biden’s orders set fire not only to our system of government but to hundreds of years of western legal tradition,” Trump said. “The only crime I’ve ever committed is defending America.”
The former president is facing more than 90 felony charges in cases across multiple states. They range from his involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, efforts to overturn the 2020 election, hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, and misrepresenting the value of his businesses.
Trump whined that his record of court appearances outweighed that of notorious mobster Al Capone.
“Remember this, I’ve been indicted more times than Alphonse Capone,” he said. “I’ve been indicted four times by this gang of thugs for nothing,” he complained. Last week, he was ordered to pay a $364 million fine in the conclusion to his New York civil fraud trial.
The former president also attacked Joe Biden for hitting GOP “political enemies” with motivated indictments to undo them. He alleged a “mob of radical left Democrat partisans” were “masquerading as judges and juries and prosecutors.” He made no mention of the GOP-led House probe into impeaching Biden—whose witnesses have repeatedly come under fire for lying.
On a more positive note, Trump expressed his admiration for law enforcement officers and air force pilots when he swerved into an anecdote about flying into Iraq while he was president. Promising to free America from the wars it became embroiled in during the Biden administration—which obviously never would’ve happened if he was president—Trump began to wax poetic about the physical excellence of the pilots.
“I sat with the pilots, the most handsome human beings I’ve ever seen. Not my thing, but they are handsome,” he said. “Better looking than Tom Cruise and taller.”
Perhaps the TV pilots played by Austin Butler and Callum Turner (both over 6 feet) are more his thing?
