In post about dead Russian opposition leader Navalny, Trump talks of his own legal problems
NEW YORK — More than 72 hours after the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in an Arctic penal colony, former President Donald Trump mentioned him by name for the first time in a post on his social media site that focused not on Navalny but on his own legal troubles. .
President Joe Biden and other Western leaders have blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the 47-year-old’s death, responding with anger and demands for answers.
But Trump made no mention of Putin’s family or Navalny in Monday morning’s post, who cast himself as victims and continued to portray the U.S. as a nation in decline.
“The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me increasingly aware of what is happening in our country,” he wrote. “It’s slow, steady progress, with COOKED, radical left politicians, prosecutors and judges leading us. on the road to destruction. Open borders, rigged elections and very unfair court decisions are DESTROYING AMERICA. WE ARE A NATION IN RETURN, A FAILING NATION! MAGA2024.â€
A New York judge on Friday ordered Trump to pay $355 million in fines in a civil fraud lawsuit. He found that the former president had inflated his wealth for years with schemes to defraud banks, insurers and others. Trump has also been criminally charged in four separate investigations, the first of which will go to trial next month.
Trump’s post immediately drew criticism from his rivals, including Nikki Haley, his last remaining challenger in the Republican nominating contest, who has stepped up her criticism of the former president heading into Saturday’s primary in South Carolina.
“Donald Trump could have condemned Vladimir Putin for being a murderous criminal,” she wrote. “Trump could have praised Navalny’s courage.” Instead, he “steals a page from the liberals’ playbook, denouncing America and our country’s influence on Russia.”
Monday morning in Sumter, she further accused Trump of “siding with a criminal” in Putin, whom she called “a dictator who murdered his political opponents.”
Biden’s campaign posted on X, formerly Twitter, that Trump finally responded after days of silence by comparing Navalny to himself in a “deranged social media post.”
Trump has been criticized for almost a decade now for his refusal to denounce the Russian leader and his frequent complimentary statements.
As president, Trump sparked outrage when he openly questioned his own intelligence services’ findings that Russia had interfered in the 2016 US election to help him win, appearing to accept Putin’s insistence that Moscow’s hands were clean.
This month he caused another stir when he said he once warned a NATO ally that he would “encourage Russia to do whatever they want” toward countries in the alliance that do not spend enough on defense.
Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has accused Putin of killing her husband in a remote prison and refusing to hand over his body as part of a cover-up.
Russian authorities said Friday that Navalny’s cause of death was still unknown and the subject of a new investigation. The findings are likely to be met with great skepticism.
Trump’s reference to Navalny’s “sudden death” was notable.
Prison officials reportedly told Navalny’s mother on Saturday when she arrived at the penal colony that her son had died of “sudden death syndrome,” Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, wrote on X.
Navalny had been jailed since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recovering from a nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.
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Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard contributed to this report from Sumter, South Carolina.