2024-02-21 15:57:05
Donald Trump said yesterday that he was the subject of political persecution and compared his fate to that of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died last week in prison, France Press reported, citing BTA.
The former US president was fined $355 million on Friday for financial fraud for misrepresenting the true value of his real estate empire in order to get better financing from banks. He likened the sanction to the way Vladimir Putin’s main opposition figure was treated in Russia.
“It’s kind of like with Navalny. A form of communism or fascism,” he said at a rally in South Carolina. Trump called the judge in the case a “lunatic.” “This guy had decided I was guilty before the trial even started,” he added, as quoted by the Associated Press.
Asked by a Fox News reporter, Trump did not mention Putin, only hailing Navalny as a “very brave man” who he said should have stayed safe abroad instead of returning to Russia. “This is happening in our country as well. We are becoming a communist country in many ways,” he said.
Navalny’s death sparked a wave of outrage in Western countries, and US President Joe Biden said his Russian counterpart Putin was responsible.
However, Trump did not immediately react and was attacked for it by his opponent in the Republican primaries, Nikki Haley. “The fact that he’s not saying anything about Navalny shows that he’s either on Putin’s side and thinks it’s okay to kill your political opponents, or he just doesn’t think it’s important,” she said on Sunday.