Donald Trump told ally Mark Levin that he had “every right” to interfere with the 2020 election in comments aired on Fox News on Sunday.
Trump was talking to the host of Life, Liberty and Levin to spruik his latest book in part two of the pre-recorded interview. At one point, Levin discusses the former president’s legal troubles and the Department of Justice’s intentions to “keep smearing you”; notably Jack Smith’s revival of the DOJ’s federal election interference case.
“It’s so crazy that my poll numbers go up. Whoever heard—you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election where you have every right to do it—you get indicted and your poll numbers go up,” Trump said. “It’s such nonsense.”
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Smith filed a “superseding indictment” in the case last week, an updated version of allegations against the 78-year-old after the Supreme Court's presidential immunity ruling. Trump faces four federal charges in the case. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and alleges the case is politically motivated by the Biden administration.
“Criming and then confessing to the criming. That’s a Trump specialty,” Katie Phang from MSNBC’s The Katie Phang Show said on X in response to Trump’s comment.
The former president also echoed a number of his usual talking points in the interview, including his relationships with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. “I remember President Xi saying, ‘if you’re soft on me, I’d hate to see you bad.’ And by the way, Putin said the exact same thing.”
Asked about the assassination attempt against him at a Pennsylvania rally in July, Trump said he felt “clear-headed” as the bullets inched past his head. “I knew I got hit in the ear. I felt I was 100 percent OK...bullets were flying right over me.”
He added that had the shooter not been killed within seconds, “it would have been like in Las Vegas, that horrible attack in Las Vegas with the crazy man up in the building shooting down into the crowds, that’s what you would have had here. These crowds were bigger.”
Trump was referring to the Oct. 1, 2017, mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip, when 64-year-old Stephen Paddock fired more than 1000 rounds onto a crowd attending the Route 91 Harvest music festival, killing 60 people.
“I’d like to think that God thinks that I’m going to straighten out our country,” Trump continued. “Our country is so sick and it’s so broken. Our country is just broken. And maybe that was the reason, I don’t know. I don’t know, a lot of people have said that,” he added.
Trump also brazenly said that the way Vice President Kamala Harris “treated Mike Pence was horrible,” referencing the viral moment from the 2020 vice presidential debate in which Harris tells Pence, “I’m speaking” as he interrupted her.
Pence and Trump’s relationship has been icy ever since the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021. Pence has publicly said he will not endorse Trump in 2024.
“They say [Kamala] has many deficiencies, but she’s a nasty person, the way she treated Mike Pence is horrible, the way she treats people is horrible,” Trump said.
