Trump Compares His $355 Million Business Fraud Fine to Death of Russian Opposition Leader Alexi Navalny

Donald Trump spent Tuesday night in Greenville, South Carolina, at a town hall with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, which he used in part to complain once again about the $355 million business fraud fine he received on Friday. With a straight face, Trump said of the ruling, “It’s a form of Navalny.”

“It is a form of communism, of fascism. The guy’s a nutjob. I’ve known this for a long time, and I’ve said it openly,” he added, referring to Arthur F. Engoron, the presiding judge in his fraud trial. It’s worth noting that Ingraham had asked Trump how he planned to come up with the money.

Earlier in the interview, Trump gave his first spoken comment on Navalny’s death. “Well, Navalny is a very sad situation,” he told Ingraham. “And he’s very brave, he was a very brave guy because he went back, could have stayed away. And frankly would have been a lot better staying away and talking from outside the country as opposed to having to go back in, because people thought that could happen, and it did happen. And it’s a horrible thing.”

“But it’s happening in our country, too,” he went on. “We are turning into a communist country in many ways. And if you look at it, I’m the leading candidate. I get indicted—I never heard of being indicted before. I get indicted four times, I have eight or nine trials, all because of the fact that I’m, and you know this, all because of the fact that I’m in politics.”

“They indicted me on things that are so ridiculous, of, Fani, in Atlanta—” he said before the audience laughed and booed. Ingraham interjected, “We’re going to get into that, we’re going to get into my favorite D.A. in a moment, but do you see yourself as a potential political prisoner in the United States because that’s their goal, to put you in jail, behind bars, for the rest of your life?”

The Fox News interview isn’t the first time Trump has compared his legal problems to the persecution of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died at an Arctic penal colony while serving a 19-year sentence on politically motivated charges..

Trump also repeated his false claims that he won the 2020 election.

“Look, I won an election that wasn’t supposed to be winnable,” he continued. “I then did much better the second time, I won’t get into it, but I did because of Fox. But I did a much better job the second time, we got millions and millions more votes the second time, and now we’re doing much better than we did the second time and the first time almost put together.”

Trump lost his bid for reelection in 2020. He received 74,216,728 votes, or 46.86% of the popular vote, while President Joe Biden received 81,268,773 votes, or 51.31% of the popular vote. In 2016, he received 62,955,340 votes and won 46.2% of the popular vote (his opponent, Hillary Clinton, received 65,788,564 votes and won 48.2% of the popular vote, but the Electoral College voted in favor of Trump).

Trump has been indicted on a total of 91 felony counts in four different cities. He has been accused of mishandling classified documents (which he admitted to), interfering and attempting to overturn the 2020 election results (amid baseless claims of vote fraud), of falsifying business records while making hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, and violating Georgia’s anti-racketeering laws while attempting to interview with the state’s results in the 2020 election.

He was also successfully sued for defamation and sexual assault by author E. Jean Carroll and has been ordered to pay millions to her in damages.

Also at the town hall, Trump yet again falsely claimed he was never under any obligation or legal requirement to return the mishandled classified documents at the center of his criminal trial in Florida.

In March 2022, a grand jury issued a subpoena that required Trump to return the documents in question. He returned some of the documents and ordered a personal aide to move and hide others.

Watch the clips of Donald Trump in the videos above.