Donald Trump is rhetorically limping his way towards the next presidential election while continuing to deny he lost the last one, no matter the ample evidence outlining that fact. He stopped by a gathering of the New Hampshire Republican Party this weekend for what seemed like his first campaign speech since confirming his 2024 run for president — and it was a predictable flop.
He turned to the ongoing criminal investigation at the Justice Department into his handling of classified materials from his presidential administration and, in an attempted defense of his conduct, described the southern Florida resort where FBI agents recovered some of those documents as featuring “very thick walls” — a nonsensical description that in no way meaningfully fulfills the requirements under federal rules for handling the disputed secrets. Briefly, Trump also slurred his words as he metaphorically stumbled through the Saturday speech.
“We have an FBI and Justice Department that does raid Mar-a-Lago in Florida,” Trump complained. “Placed under lock and key, a very, very powerful building. Very secure. Very thick walls… [Investigators] asked if we could do ’em a favor. They saw the room. We were having very good discussions with NARA, which is what we’re supposed to do. And we looked at the room. They asked us, ‘Will you do us a favor?’ They came down and looked at it. I told them, ‘Absolutely, go down and look.’ They looked in the room. They, I think, found everything in order. It was sealed. It wasn’t stuff laying all over the garage floor… They made a request: ‘Could you put on an additional lock?’ We had a strong lock.” Other accounts of that visit by Justice Department officials prior to the raid depict Trump’s team as substantially more standoffish.
Somewhat slurring his words, Trump added that supposedly he effectively complied with this push. “And then they came in and they raided Mar-a-Lago after that,” Trump whined.
The ex-president who is hoping to regain his old post also described the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which is a federal agency that, as its name suggests, deals with document preservation, as a “very radical left” institution, which doesn’t make any sense. How does an agency that focuses on handling government documents even show far-left ideology? Reading Communist treatises to the storage bins? Anyway, Trump subsequently expressed predictable optimism about his chances in New Hampshire, even though he lost there by a large margin in the 2020 presidential election. Available indications in the footage from New Hampshire were that some of the crowd ate it up. Is this really what Republicans might be running on? Barely comprehensible complaints from a guy under criminal investigation?
Trump had another event planned for Saturday in South Carolina. Watch Donald below:
Trump claims that he advises acquaintances of his who want to become US citizens to just walk across the southern border pic.twitter.com/bah11FVWQ5
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 28, 2023
