After a week plagued by hand sores, deteriorating speech, and legal predicaments that included three key attorneys leaving his side and droves of courtroom faux pas in the E. Jean Carroll case, Donald Trump offered a pretty extreme idea for New Hampshire voters.
“What is your closing message to the people of New Hampshire?” asked Fox News’s Sean Hannity in a one-on-one interview with the GOP front-runner on Thursday night.
“The president of the United States, and I’m not talking about myself, I’m talking about any president, has to have immunity. Because if you take immunity away from the president—so important—you will have a president that’s not going to be able to do anything. Because when he leaves office, the opposing party, president, if it’s the opposing party, will indict the president for doing something that should have been good,” Trump said, after a brief rant about Colorado’s and Maine’s decisions to keep him off their primary ballots.
Hannity: What is your closing message to the people of New Hampshire?
Trump: … You take immunity from the president, so important, you will have a president that’s not going to be able to do anything. pic.twitter.com/oMbBudzlFu
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 19, 2024
No other president in the history of the country has faced criminal charges. Trump, however, is staring down the barrel at 91 charges across four separate criminal cases, for his behavior related to the January 6 insurrection, his attempt to undermine the election results in Georgia, his alleged theft of thousands of classified documents, and the Stormy Daniels hush-money case, in the last of which Trump is accused of using his former fixer Michael Cohen to sweep an affair with the porn actress under the rug ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Trump’s messaging on Thursday is an interesting indication of not just where his mind is at—but where he would prefer voters’ minds to be, as well, as he enters a period of extreme legal uncertainty in tandem with his race to reclaim the White House.