Defendant Trump slams criminal charges as insult to the U.S.
The Hindu
Former U.S. President Donald Trump spoke to an audience of several hundred supporters after returning to his beachfront mansion in southern Florida from his Manhattan court trial
Donald Trump offered a full-throated defence of his conduct Tuesday in his first public remarks since being charged over hush money payments to a porn star, blasting the criminal prosecution as "an insult to our country."
Hours earlier the 76-year-old former U.S. president pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts in a dramatic hearing in New York that transfixed the nation — and began the countdown to the first ever criminal trial of an American president.
"I never thought anything like this could happen in America — never thought it could happen," Mr. Trump told an audience of several hundred donors, political allies and other supporters after returning to Mar-a-Lago, his beachfront mansion in southern Florida.
"The only crime that I've committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it... It's an insult to our country."
Mr. Trump — the frontrunner in the race for the 2024 Republican nomination — said from a stage festooned with American flags in an opulent gold-and-cream ballroom that "radical left" prosecutors were out to get him "at any cost."
The celebratory mood in the room seemed at odds with the gravity of the day's events in Manhattan, with Mr. Trump reprising the applause lines that his supporters hear regularly at his rallies — and being rewarded with the same boisterous cheers and clapping.
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