Trump: Americans Would Not 'Stand For' an Indictment Former President Donald Trump (Getty Images)
By Sandy Fitzgerald | Thursday, 15 September 2022 02:48 PM EDT
Former President Donald Trump on Thursday said there is no reason that the Department of Justice would indict him over the records that were taken to his Mar-a-Lago estate, other than "if they are sick and deranged," but if it happens, there will be "problems" throughout the United States.
"I think if it happened, I think you'd have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we've never seen before," Trump told radio show host and columnist Hugh Hewitt on his program Thursday. "I don't think the people of the United States would stand for it."
Trump also insisted, even though he has not yet officially announced his 2024 presidential campaign, that an indictment would not prohibit him from running for another term in the White House.
However, when Hewitt reminded him that the "legacy" media would claim he was "attempting to incite violence" with the warnings of "big, big problems," Trump replied that he was "not inciting. I'm just saying what my opinion is. I don't think the people of this county would stand for it."
"They will not sit still and stand for this ultimate of hoaxes," said Trump. "We went through phony impeachments. We went through phony Mueller reports that came out with no collusion … on top of that, I did more than virtually any president. You take a look, with the biggest tax cuts, the rebuilding of our military, with all of the things we've done. I don't think the people of this country would stand for it, especially since they know, especially since they know I'm totally innocent."
Trump further said that "everything" that was taken to his Mar-a-Lago home and seized there by the FBI should not have been.
"If you look at the presidential, if you look at the act that was passed, it talks about what you can do, what you can't do, how you negotiate with NARA (the National Archives and Records Administration)," said Trump. "Then if you look at what's running NARA, it's radical left-run, radical, radical left. Then you take a look at Hillary [Clinton] with her 33,000 emails that were deleted, and you take a look at Obama and others, and people say Trump's gotten treated very, very unfairly."
Trump also said that nobody from the Justice Department called him to ask him to return the records, but, "We were having very positive discussions. All of a sudden, we get raided by the FBI."
However, he would not comment on whether he knew the documents belonged to the federal government, and when Hewitt asked him if he took the papers on purpose or if they were taken accidentally, Trump insisted that "everything was declassified."
Trump on Thursday also talked about his endorsed candidates, telling Hewitt that his record in the primaries is at "98.6. It's easy to remember because that's a perfect temperature."
"I endorsed J.D. Vance as an example, and he'd done great," said Trump. "He's really doing good. Herschel [Walker's] doing good. I think Dr. Oz is going good, but you know, [John] Fetterman is totally cratering, I think. I mean, if he doesn't crater, nobody will. If Fetterman makes it, anybody can make it."
The former president addressed several other topics in the wide-ranging interview, including:
- Inflation: "We had better than no inflation. We had 1%. The ideal number is between 1% and 2%. I said let's keep it down, and I kept it down. And I kept energy prices down."
- China: The real estate market "could very well collapse. One of the reasons is because I put on tariffs the like of which nobody's ever seen before. … What I did is I put on hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of tariffs coming into the United States, and Biden, as much as he wants to do it for his friends who pay his son and him a fortune, Biden is finding a hard time taking those tariffs off."
- Electric Cars/Gasoline: "We do have the gasoline for the cars that people want. I'm not against electric cars. I personally don't like them because they don't go long enough. They don't go far enough. You have to stop for two hours, and that's not going to get that much better, no matter what they do. So I think it's insane what they're doing. Let the market determine if somebody wants to buy an electric car or a gasoline car."
- Immigration: "Democrats are all about a word. It's called disinformation. Some people say misinformation … they will look at a border where millions of people are pouring through from prisons, from everywhere. They're emptying their prisons into the United States. We're like a dumping ground. And they'll say, they'll look you in the eye and they'll say we have a secure border."
- Supreme Court: "I'm proud of them. I mean, they've done a great job. I'm also proud of the fact that we've got almost 300 federal judges all throughout the United States including Washington, D.C. Over 300. We have almost 300 judges, and that has a big decision. That has a tremendous impact on our country."
- Midterms: "I think that we're going to have a very big victory based on the economy. I think it's about the economy. It's about the horrible inflation. It's cutting people's lifestyles. It's cutting people's, it's ruining people's lives, what's happening."