Trump speaks of new ‘N-word,’ compares himself to Al Capone in off-script moment at rally in wake of legal woes
There’s a new “N-word” on Donald Trump’s mind, and it doesn’t even start with the letter N.
The Republican front-runner in the race for his old job lashed out at his mounting legal woes during a rally in Waterford Township, Michigan, Saturday.
“My whole life I didn’t know what the N-word — I didn’t know what indictment meant,” Trump quipped at one point, veering off script.
“[I] got indicted more than Alphonse Capone, Scarface,” he added, repeating a favorite line. “I’m just doing something for incredible people — it’s called the American people … It doesn’t bother me.”
President Biden’s campaign quickly highlighted the apparent slip-up as it attempted to deflect attention from concerns about the incumbent president’s age and string of verbal flubs amid a damning special counsel report that slammed his mental sharpness.
In recent years, Trump had said the “N-word” referred to the word “nuclear,” not the offensive term for a dark-skinned person.
Trump critic and former White House adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman alleged that there are tapes of him using the actual verboten slur, though none have ever surfaced in the years since those accusations emerged.
A former producer of “The Apprentice” later claimed the tapes did not exist.
His remarks in Michigan came a day after Justice Arthur Engoron in New York handed down a crushing penalty of $355 million plus interest that could push the cost up to $450 million after concluding the developer manipulated his asset valuations.
Engoron also prohibited Trump from working in leading roles in New York companies for three years.
“This judge is a lunatic,” Trump fumed.
“I knew I would lose a billion or $2 billion if I was honest running for president and being president,” Trump mused at another point in his rally. “It was the best thing I ever did.”
Trump further decried the penalty from the sprawling New York business fraud cause as “bitterness and revenge,” while also claiming he is the victim of “repulsive abuses of power.” He called Engoron “one of the least respected” judges in New York state.
“It’s a disgusting thing. I deal in the bank. The bank is happy. There’s no victims,” he said. “Nobody is going back to New York state. A lot of people are leaving — a lot of businesses.”
An investigation conducted by the Associated Press that studied close to 70 years of civil cases found that the Trump Organization was “the only big business” that was “threatened with a shutdown without a showing of obvious victims and major losses.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat who prosecuted the case, hailed Engoron’s decision as vindication, declaring that “justice has been served.”
Trump’s allies have long been vexed by James. During his rally, he cited an old video of her pledging to be a “real pain in the a–” to him and argued she was biased.
The legal setback last Friday came weeks after Trump was ordered to pay $83.3 million to advice columnist E. Jean Carroll for defamation after he was found liable in civil court for sexually abusing her decades ago.
Trump’s team is appealing that decision.
In tandem with the civil cases, Trump is also facing 91 criminal counts spanning four separate indictments. He has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing in all of them.
The first of those — the 34-count hush-money case — is set to head to trial on March 25 in New York.
“Our court system is a mess,” Trump vented.
Trump placed the blame largely on one man for his avalanche of legal woes: Biden.
“Congress ought to impeach crooked Joe Biden for attacking his political opponent by weaponizing, the DOJ, FBI, and even local DAs and attorney generals against his opponent — me,” he said.
Last August, Trump vowed to “appoint a real special counsel or maybe you’ll call it a special prosecutor … to look at all of these bribes, kickbacks, crimes” related to Biden.
He similarly said he would name a “special prosecutor” to examine Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. However, that ultimately never came to fruition.
While airing his grievances about the spate of legal turmoil plaguing him, Trump also conveyed optimism about the future of the country, pointing to his position in the polls.
“If we win Michigan, we’re going to win the election,” Trump declared.
Michigan is widely seen as one of the top seven battleground states in the general election.
At the moment, Trump has a 4.8 percentage-point edge over Biden in the Great Lake State, according to the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate of polls.
Trump won Michigan in the 2016 election but lost it in 2020 against Biden. Michigan is set to hold its Republican primary on Feb. 27 and caucus on March 2.
The former president is the overwhelming favorite to win the GOP nod to be the party standard bearer. His last standing major rival, former US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, has not yet won a major nominating contest.
