Former President Donald Trump on Monday compared himself to Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in South African prisons before emerging to lead the nation out of decades of apartheid rule, as he railed against the numerous criminal charges against him.
Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, sought to paint himself as a victim of political persecution, telling a crowd of supporters at a Derry, New Hampshire, rally, "I don't mind being Nelson Mandela, because I'm doing it for a reason."
The remark from Trump, who has been indicted four times and faces 91 criminal charges across the cases, came after he filed to appear on the presidential ballot in New Hampshire.
Trump is facing two federal indictments brought by special counsel Jack Smith, as well as state criminal prosecutions in New York and Georgia. Some of the most severe charges against him are in connection with his alleged mishandling of classified information and efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
Trump in recent days has also been appearing in person at his civil fraud case in New York, where a judge has found him and his eldest sons liable for fraud.
The former president's self-comparison to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning anti-apartheid activist builds on his claim at an Iowa campaign event last week that he would be "willing to go to jail, if that's what it takes for our country to win and become a democracy again."
As he eyes a potential general election rematch with President Joe Biden, Trump focused a large portion of his campaign speech Monday on Israel's war with Hamas, using it to criticize Biden's recent address to the nation and arguing that Americans are less safe under his administration. He called for the US to build a missile defense system like Israel's Iron Dome, and said he wanted to "build a shield around our country."
Trump, who has ratcheted up his violent and incendiary rhetoric on the campaign trail, argued a vote for Biden in 2024 would be "a vote to turn the United States into a hotbed of jihadists and make our cities into dumping grounds very much resembling the Gaza Strip." The former president has used Hamas' deadly October 7 attack on Israel and the resulting war in arguing for his hard-line immigration policies, including implementing a travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries if he were to win reelection.
