OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former President Donald Trump sounded a defiant tone last week in the face of 91 different charges in four court cases in New York, Washington, D.C., Fulton County, Ga., and southern Florida.
Trump, who wracked up more delegates in Missouri, Michigan, and Idaho on Saturday, said he would rather lose his “freedom” than “surrender” to President Joe Biden and his surrogates.
“Biden and his deranged prosecutors, attorney generals, and local district attorneys are trying to take away my liberty; they’re trying to take it away; they’re trying to steal my liberty. If there’s any shred of justice left, they will fail, and we will win, and so far, we’re doing very nicely. Thank you,” Trump said during a speech in National Harbor, Md.
“But I would rather lose my freedom than surrender to this group of thugs, tyrants, and fascist scoundrels,” he added.
“The more the corrupt establishment tries to stop us, the more you know the day is near at hand when we will break free from their grip. We’re gonna break free very soon,” Trump said.
Trump sounds a defiant tone against Biden and his politicized legal effort to put his opponent in jail — like a communist or a Nazi would do.
"I would rather lose my freedom than surrender to this group of thugs, tyrants, and fascist scoundrels."#Trump2024 pic.twitter.com/z4s0pCJu7M
— USA Features Media (@UsaFeatures) February 26, 2024
Trump also said he was paying the price for standing up to the Uniparty political establishment in D.C.
“I stand before you today not only as your past and hopefully future president but as a proud political dissident. I am a dissident,” he noted, adding that an Election Day victory for him would be a day of reckoning for his opponents.
“For hardworking Americans, Nov. 5 will be our new liberation day. But for the liars and cheaters and fraudsters and censors and imposters who have commandeered our government, it will be their judgment day; their judgment day,” he said.
“When we win, the curtain closes on their corrupt reign, and the sun rises on a bright new future for America,” he said, according to the Associated Press.
“These are the stakes of this election: Our country is being destroyed, and the only thing standing between you and its obliteration is me,” he said, calling President Joe Biden’s presidency “an express train barreling toward servitude and to ruin.”
”A vote for Trump is your ticket back to freedom, it’s your passport out of tyranny, and it’s your only escape from Joe Biden and his gang’s fast track to hell. And in many ways, we’re living in hell right now,” he added.
“Remember ‘The Apprentice’?” Trump asked at one point, referencing the hit TV show he hosted before he left it to run for president in 2016.
“Crooked Joe Biden — you’re fired! Get the hell out of here,” he said.
Trump is still months away from officially capturing the 2024 Republican nomination, but he is actively considering who he will choose as a running mate, and he dropped another new name into the mix on Thursday.
During a visit to the U.S. border in Texas, Trump was accompanied by several state officials, including Gov. Greg Abbott, who the former president said was on his shortlist for VP, Newsweek reported.
In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity after his tour of the border near Eagle Pass, which has seen thousands of migrants crossing illegally since President Biden took office and reversed nearly all of Trump’s immigration and border security policies, the 45th president called Abbott a “spectacular man,” adding the governor is “absolutely” on his short list for running mate.
Abbott would “certainly he would be somebody that I would very much consider,” Trump told the host.
Newsweek added:
Eagle Pass is a key area of contention after a Supreme Court ruling in January said federal agents could cut razor wire. The Biden adminstration argued it prevented them from accessing important parts of the border.
Since, Texas has blocked federal agents from entering, putting the state directly at odds on the border issue with Trump’s political foe President Joe Biden.
Biden also visited Texas this week, where he called on Trump to “join” him in an effort to pass the bipartisan border bill that stalled in Congress after the latter urged Republicans to block it.
Trump and his allies in Congress rejected the bill because it granted more powers to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to bypass current immigration law while still allowing as many as 5,000 people into the country illegally.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) declared the measure “dead on arrival” in the House if it had passed the Senate because of those issues and others.
