Former President Donald Trump is increasingly casting himself as a martyr on the campaign trail as he finds himself facing more than 90 charges in various jurisdictions and court-imposed fines totaling more than $400 million, for misconduct that ranges from sexual assault to election meddling.
“I stand before you today not only as your past and hopefully future president, but as a proud political dissident,” Trump said Saturday onstage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington.
“I am a dissident,” he repeated.
Earlier in the week, Trump made a bizarre comparison between himself and the recently deceased Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Fielding a question on his New York civil fraud case and the massive fine currently threatening his real estate business empire, Trump called it “a form of Navalny.”
He managed to make the comparison without mention of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was widely accused of orchestrating Navalny’s death at age 47 — and to whom Trump has cozied up in the past.
Trump’s CPAC speech touched on many of his frequent talking points, such as the migrants arriving at the U.S. border with Mexico and his own cognitive “genius.”
He elicited big cheers from the crowd when he talked about Election Day — particularly what the results might mean for his enemies.
“Nov. 5 will be our new Liberation Day,” Trump began.
“But for the liars and cheaters and fraudsters and censors and imposters who have commandeered our government,” he went on, “it will be their Judgment Day.”
Trump said he was leaving to appear in South Carolina, where voters were casting ballots in the state’s Republican presidential primary.
