The Republican frontrunner addressed rally in Iowa and accused President Joe Biden of “corruption and failure”
Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Mason City, Iowa, January 5, 2023 © AP / Charlie Neibergall
Former US President Donald Trump has dismissed the multiple criminal cases against him, telling supporters that he’s been prosecuted more harshly than infamous Chicago gangster Al Capone. He made his comments at a rally in Iowa ahead of the first contest of the election year.
“I’ve got more indictments than Al Capone, did you ever hear of Al Capone?” Trump asked supporters in Mason City on Friday. “The great Alphonse Capone…but I’ve got it worse than Al Capone and he’s about as bad as you get,” he continued.
“This was never in my plan…I was being indicted so fast we didn’t know where in the hell they were coming from. If I flew over a blue state, the next day I’d get served with a subpoena,” he exclaimed, to laughter from the crowd.
With eleven months to go until the 2024 presidential election, Trump is facing more than 90 criminal counts in two federal cases – concerning his alleged instigation of the January 2021 riot on Capitol Hill and his alleged mishandling of classified documents – as well as two state-level cases and a multitude of civil suits.
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He has dismissed the federal indictments as a “pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election.”
Trump held two rallies in Iowa on Friday, during which he implored residents of the Hawkeye State to turn up at next week’s Republican caucuses and support his bid for the presidency. The Iowa caucuses are the first contest of the primary season, and recent polling shows him with a commanding 32-point lead over his nearest Republican rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Nevertheless, Trump urged his supporters not to get complacent. “Bad things happen when you sit back,” he said, adding that “you have to get out and vote because it sets the tone. It even sets the tone, frankly, for November.”
Hours before Trump spoke in Iowa, President Joe Biden delivered a speech of his own in Pennsylvania, in which he claimed that American democracy was “nearly lost” when Trump’s supporters rioted at the Capitol three years ago.
Trump argued that Biden is the real “threat to democracy,” citing the indictments against him and the harsh sentences handed down to non-violent participants in the Capitol riot.
READ MORE: More Americans doubt Biden won 2020 election – poll
“Joe Biden’s record is an unbroken streak of weakness, incompetence, corruption, and failure,” Trump told the crowd at the first rally of the evening. “That’s why Crooked Joe is staging his pathetic fearmongering campaign event in Pennsylvania today.”
Despite the Biden campaign’s efforts to frame the 2024 election as a referendum on democracy itself rather than on his own record, most recent polls show the incumbent Democrat losing to Trump.
