Donald Trump reacts to his indictment: ‘This is an attack on our country’

Donald Trump was quick to react to his historic indictment, the first of a former U.S. president. The Republican, secluded for months in his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach (Florida), released a statement in which he defined the decision by a Manhattan grand jury to indict him in a case stemming from $130,000 in hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign in exchange for her silence over an alleged affair between the two as “political persecution and electoral interference at the highest level in history.”

He has also reacted through an incendiary message posted on Truth Social, the social network he founded after he was kicked off Twitter following the January 6 attack on the Capitol (capital letters are his): “THIS IS AN ATTACK ON OUR COUNTRY THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE. IT IS LIKEWISE A CONTINUING ATTACK ON OUR ONCE FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS. THE USA IS NOW A THIRD WORLD NATION, A NATION IN SERIOUS DECLINE. SO SAD!”

In a more calm town, in the statement released on Thursday, the Republican 2024 candidate argues that since he descended the golden escalator of Trump Tower, a gesture with which he announced in 2015 his intentions to run for the White House, “the Radical Left Democrats — the enemy of the hard-working men and women of this country — have been engaged in a Witch-Hunt to destroy the Make America Great Again movement.” That slogan, summed up in the acronym MAGA, continues to inflame his loyal base of followers, whom he has incited to protest in recent weeks in reaction to his arrest, which will take place in the coming days.

It is precisely his most loyal followers whom he addresses when he writes: “You remember it just like I do: Russia, Russia, Russia; the Mueller Hoax; Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine; Impeachment Hoax 1; Impeachment Hoax 2; the illegal and unconstitutional Mar-a-Largo raid; and now this.” In just one sentence he references allegations that the Kremlin interference in the campaign that carried him to the White House in 2016, the fact that he was the only U.S. president to survive two impeachment votes, and when the FBI legally raided his Florida residence in search of classified documents from his time in office.

“The Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump,’ but now they’ve done the unthinkable — indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant Election Interference,” the former president continued. “Never before in our Nation’s history has this been done. The Democrats have cheated countless times over the decades, including spying on my campaign, but weaponizing our justice system to punish a political opponent, who just happens to be President of the United States and by far the leading Republican candidate for President, has never happened before. Ever.”

Trump also lashed out at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is in charge of his indictment, and associated him with Hungarian-born progressive billionaire George Soros, who donated to Bragg’s campaign when he won at the polls as a Democrat for his post as district attorney. “Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who was hand-picked and funded by George Soros, is a disgrace. Rather than stopping the unprecedented crime wave taking over New York City, he’s doing Joe Biden’s dirty work, ignoring the murders and burglaries and assaults he should be focused on. This is how Bragg spends his time!”

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