Eric Trump echoed several of his father’s grievances after the pair found out Friday that they, along with Donald Trump Jr., have to pay a $364 million fine—before interest—for committing bank fraud, and insisted that his family’s real estate business is actually “amazing.”
About an hour after the former president emerged from Mar-a-Lago to criticize the city and state of New York, smear the state’s attorney general, and falsely claim that there was “no fraud” taking place in the Trump Organization, his son hit many of the same notes on Fox News.
“The best thing I ever did was get out of New York. New York is a hopeless place at this point. It’s so sad,” Trump complained to Jeanine Pirro, guest host of The Ingraham Angle, adding that the Trump Organization is “an amazing company.”
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Not only were Eric Trump and his brother ordered Friday to each pay $4 million—not including interest—but they were also stripped of their roles as executive vice presidents. Also, the siblings can’t even run any other New York business for two years.
Earlier, Donald Trump likewise knocked the city he had long called home before declaring Palm Beach, Florida his primary residence in 2019.
“I paid approximately $300 million in taxes as the migrants come in and they take over New York,” he griped. “We’ll appeal. We’ll be successful, I think, because frankly if we’re not successful, New York state is gone. People are moving out of New York state, and because of this, they’re going to move out at a much faster rate.”
On Fox, whose “hard news” anchors earlier agreed with some of the indicted former president’s talking points about the case, Eric Trump then claimed the trial was just another attempt by Democrats to harm his father politically.
“They are doing everything they possibly can—no different than impeachment one, impeachment two, the Russia hoax, the spying on his campaign, the going after Kavanaugh,” he said.
The scene at Mar-a-Lago hadn’t been much different. “This is Russia, this is China, this is the same game. It all comes out of the DOJ. It all comes out of Biden,” Trump said, even though the civil fraud case was not brought by the Department of Justice.
Eric Trump also argued that his indicted father’s myriad legal troubles only exist because he’s running for office again.
“They would not be doing this if Donald Trump wasn’t the frontrunner for president, beating Joe Biden in every single poll, absolutely blowing Nikki Haley out of the water,” Trump told Pirro, despite national polls from a few weeks ago showing otherwise. “That’s why they’re attacking him. They’re attacking him civilly and criminally. They are doing everything they possibly can.”
In Florida, Trump likewise had said the law used against him in the trial was applied “because I’m running for president.”
After citing favorable polls, he declared: “If I weren’t running, none of this would have ever happened. None of these lawsuits would have ever happened. I would have had a nice life.”
While Trump manages his cash crunch just weeks after being hit with an $83 million defamation verdict, his attention will also be on his first criminal trial next month—also in New York—for allegedly falsifying business records to help his 2016 presidential campaign. That trial is set to begin March 25, nearly a year after he was indicted on 34 felony counts.
