by Former President Donald Trump returned to Fox News Monday night and aired a series of complaints about the investigations he faces, voting by mail and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in his first interview with the network since the legal documents they showed that the leaders of the network condemned him in private.
There was no indication of the acrimony detailed in those communications, which were made public as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network. Trump, the leading Republican presidential candidate, spoke for nearly an hour with prime time host Sean Hannity, long one of his most outspoken supporters on Fox News.
Trump found a welcome environment for his attempt to tie up a potential accusation confronts in New York City the myth of the rigging of the 2020 election that led to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol, defends rioters who were later arrested and says he and DeSantis, his main rival for the presidential nomination of the Republican Party, they were never friends. .
“It’s a new way of cheating on the election,” Trump said when asked about the investigation into Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s secret money. “It’s called election interference.”
On March 18, Trump predicted that he would be arrested in three days, which turned out to be incorrect. But he has shared more heated rhetoric about a possible prosecution in recent days, including warning of “potential death and destruction” should he be indicted.
Trump said Monday he was not calling for violence, adding that his Truth Social post of an article with a split photo of him holding a baseball bat in front of Bragg it was done unknowingly.
“We did not see photos. We put a story that was very exculpatory, very good from the point of view of what we are talking about,” he said.
He expressed relatively little emotion when asked how he was handling the possibility of arrest, later changing his response to a riff involving the alleged emptying of South American prisons and “mental institutions.”
“Well, I deal with it,” he said of a possible indictment. “We are dealing with very dishonest people. We are dealing with thugs. We are dealing with people who I really believe hate our country.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, Trump promoted the song “Justice for All,” which features a chorus of men jailed for their roles in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol singing the national anthem, interposed with Trump reciting the Pledge of Pledge. to the flag. . Trump began his rally Saturday in Waco, Texas, by playing a video version of the recording, which also featured footage of the insurrection.
“The J6 is beating Taylor Swift,” Trump said, noting the song’s success. on a variety of music charts. “It’s Donald Trump and the J-Sixers on iTunes, Amazon, and Billboard that’s the big deal. Number 1, Donald Trump.
“That is a tribute to the fact that people feel that the people of J6 have been treated very unfairly,” he added.
Reflecting on some of his personnel decisions during his presidency, Trump said he “may have made a mistake” in choosing FBI Director Christopher Wray, adding that he “didn’t like” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. .
But Trump saved his harshest criticism for DeSantis.
“Not friends,” Trump said of their relationship before DeSantis became a presidential candidate. “I didn’t know him well.”
Trump described DeSantis as a “desperate” politician who, he claimed, came to him with “tears in his eyes” for an endorsement in a 2018 gubernatorial primary race against Adam Putnum, then Florida’s agriculture commissioner.
The way Trump sees it, DeSantis owes him his good fortune and shouldn’t be running against him in 2024.
“I helped a lot of people get elected,” he said, adding: “But I got in a few. Ron, I got in. I was losing. There was no way. It was over. I was dead. I was going to drop out. He was gone.”
A DeSantis spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. DeSantis is by far the second most favored contender in the GOP field for 2024 in polls, but amid intense attacks from Trump, some donors and allies have questioned whether he is ready for what would be a tough fight in the primaries. Trump has increasingly focused on DeSantis since he wrongly predicted the date of his arrest.
The interview was the first Trump had conducted with a prime-time Fox News host since September.
After the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch said in emails that the network wanted to “make Trump a non-person” and was “turning around as fast as possible,” legal documents revealed. recently as part of the Dominion lawsuit.
But the Trump team has felt that Fox’s coverage of him this year is an improvement over his coverage in 2016, the last time he faced a hotly contested primary.
“They were openly hostile to him in 2016,” an adviser said this month. “They’re not as overtly hostile” now.
