WILDWOOD, N.J.: Sandwiched between his appearances in court, Donald Trump headed on Saturday to the Jersey Shore, where he repeatedly blamed President Joe Biden for the criminal charges he’s facing as the presumptive nominees prepare to face off in the November election and called his New York hush money case “a Biden show trial.”
Blasting the Democratic president “a total moron,” Trump before a crowd of tens of thousands repeatedly characterized the cases against him as politically motivated and timed to harm his ability to campaign.
“He’s a fool. He’s not a smart man,” Trump said of Biden. “I talk about him differently now because now the gloves are off.”
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, drew what his team called a “mega crowd” to a Saturday evening rally in the southern New Jersey resort town of Wildwood, 150 miles (241 kilometers) south of the New York City courthouse where he has been forced to spend most weekdays sitting silently through his felony hush money trial.
Lisa Fagan, spokesperson for the city of Wildwood, told The Associated Press that she estimated a crowd of between 80,000 and 100,000 attendees, based off her own observations on the scene Saturday, having seen “dozens” of other events in the same space.
Trump was joined on stage by several high-level endorsers including North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and NFL Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor, who is still listed as a registered sex offender after pleading guilty in New York in 2011 to misdemeanor criminal charges of sexual misconduct and patronizing an underage prostitute.
The beachfront gathering, described by Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., as the largest political gathering in state history, was designed to serve as a show of force at a critical moment for Trump, who is facing dozens of felony charges in four separate criminal cases with the election less than six months away.
Hours before he was scheduled to take the stage, thousands of Trump loyalists donning “Never Surrender” T-shirts and red “Make America Great Again” hats crowded onto the sand between the boardwalk and carnival rides to greet the former Republican president.
“The everyday American people are 100 percent behind him,” said Doreen O’Neill, a 62-year-old nurse from Philadelphia.
“They have to cheat and smear him and humiliate him in that courtroom every single day,” O’Neill said. “This country is going to go insane if they steal the election again.”
Trump’s extraordinary legal woes, which include three other unrelated criminal cases, have emerged as a central issue in the campaign.
Trump has repeatedly accused the Biden administration and Democratic officials in New York of using the legal system to block his return to the White House. Prosecutors allege the former president broke the law to conceal an affair with a porn actor that would have hurt his first presidential bid.
On Saturday, Trump posited that even those whom he accuses of politically motivated prosecutions didn’t bring every case they could have, pointing to the boosts his campaign has sustained with each wave of charges.
“I heard they were going to do a couple of other things and they said from Washington ... ‘we’re indicting him into the White House,’” Trump said. “They said, ‘Don’t do it.’”
While Trump seized on his legal woes Saturday, a judge’s gag order — and the threat of jail — limit Trump’s ability to comment publicly on witnesses, jurors and some others connected to the New York trial, which is expected to consume much of the month. The judge in the case already has fined Trump $9,000 for violating the order and warned that jail could follow if he doesn’t comply.
The order doesn’t include references to Judge Juan M. Merchan, whom Trump called “highly conflicted” or District Attorney Alvin Bragg, both of whom Trump said are “doing the bidding for crooked Joe Biden.”
Trump’s responsibilities as a defendant have limited his ability to win over voters on the campaign trail.
He spent last week’s off-day from court in the general election battlegrounds of Wisconsin and Michigan. And he was campaigning with tens of thousands of voters Saturday in New Jersey, a reliably Democratic state. Parts of New Jersey have deep-red enclaves and the southern shoreline in particular draws tourists and summer homeowners from neighboring Pennsylvania, a key swing state.
Biden, meanwhile, opened his weekend with a series of fundraising events on the West Coast.
He avoided Trump’s legal challenges — as he has done consistently — while addressing donors in Seattle. Instead, the Democratic president focused on Trump’s recent interview with Time magazine in which the Republican former president said states should be left to determine whether to prosecute women for abortions or to monitor their pregnancies.
Saturday’s visit to the New Jersey Shore resort wasn’t Trump’s first.
While president, Trump held a rally there in January 2020 to thank Van Drew, the New Jersey congressman who had just left the Democratic Party for the GOP as a rebuke for the former president’s first impeachment.
Trump drew a crowd at the time that lined the streets, filled bars and supported numerous vendors in what is usually a sleepy city in the winter. This time, the summer season is around the corner for the resort known for its wide beaches and boardwalk games and shops.
Wildwood is in New Jersey’s 2nd District, which Van Drew has represented for three terms and covers all or part of six counties in southern New Jersey. It went for Trump in 2016 and again in 2020 after earlier backing Barack Obama.
Trump is set to return to the courtroom next week, when key prosecution witness Michael Cohen, Trump’s fixer-turned-foe, is expected to take the witness stand. Last week, he was visibly angry at times as he was forced to sit through testimony from former porn actor Stormy Daniels, who described a sexual encounter with the former president in shocking detail.
Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying internal Trump Organization business records. The charges stem from paperwork such as invoices and checks that were deemed legal expenses in company records. Prosecutors say those payments largely were reimbursements to Cohen, Trump’s attorney, who paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet.
The prosecution could rest its case by the end of the week. It’s unclear if Trump himself will take the stand when the defense presents its case.
Back on the Jersey Shore, 65-year-old Pat Day said she felt some urgency to see Trump in person on Saturday.
“We want to see Trump before they take him out,” said Day, who was visiting from the Florida Keys. “I’m worried. They’re going to do everything they can so he doesn’t get elected again.”
Trump tells Jersey Shore crowd he’s being forced to endure ‘Biden show trial’ in hush money case
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Trump tells Jersey Shore crowd he’s being forced to endure ‘Biden show trial’ in hush money case
- The former president’s extraordinary legal woes, which include three other unrelated criminal cases, have emerged as a central issue in the campaign
Zelensky presses EU to tap Russian assets at crunch summit
- “Russian assets must be used to defend against Russian aggression and rebuild what was destroyed by Russian attacks. It’s moral. It’s fair. It’s legal,” Zelensky said
- German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was among those agreeing strongly as he said there was “no better option“
Brussels: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told EU leaders Thursday they had the “moral” and legal right to use frozen Russian assets to fund Kyiv — as pressure grew on key player Belgium to drop its opposition at a summit showdown.
The 27-nation bloc is scrambling to bolster its ally Ukraine, as US President Donald Trump pushes for a deal with President Vladimir Putin to end the fighting.
Officials have insisted leaders’ talks in Brussels will last as long as it takes to hammer out an agreement, saying both Ukraine’s survival — nearly four years into the war — and Europe’s credibility are at stake.
“We will not leave the European summit without a solution for the funding of Ukraine,” European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen said.
The EU’s executive wants to fund a loan to Ukraine by using frozen assets from Russia’s central bank, though it is holding on to a back-up plan for the bloc to raise the money itself.
The EU estimates Ukraine needs an extra 135 billion euros ($159 billion) to stay afloat over the next two years — with the cash crunch set to start in April.
Zelensky said Kyiv needed a decision on its financing by the end of the year and that the move could give it more leverage in talks to end the war.
“Russian assets must be used to defend against Russian aggression and rebuild what was destroyed by Russian attacks. It’s moral. It’s fair. It’s legal,” Zelensky said.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was among those agreeing strongly as he said there was “no better option.”
But Belgium’s Prime Minister Bart De Wever — who held talks with Zelensky on the sidelines — seemed unconvinced so far.
“I have not seen a text that could persuade me to give Belgium’s agreement,” he told Belgian lawmakers before the summit kicked off.
The vast bulk of the assets are held by international deposit organization Euroclear in Belgium, and the government fears it could face crippling financial and legal reprisals from Moscow.
EU officials say they have gone out of their way to allay Belgian worries and that multiple layers of protection — including guarantees from other member states — mean the risks are minimal.
“At this stage, the guarantees offered by the Commission remain insufficient,” De Wever said.
- Ukraine’s looming cash crunch -
In a bid to plug Kyiv’s yawning gap, the Commission has proposed tapping 210 billion euros of frozen assets, initially to provide Kyiv 90 billion euros over two years.
The unprecedented scheme would see the funds loaned to the EU, which would then loan them on to Ukraine.
Kyiv would then only pay back the “reparations loan” once the Kremlin compensates it for the damage.
In theory, other EU countries could override Belgium and ram the initiative through with a weighted majority, but that would be a nuclear option that few see as likely for now.
De Wever insisted that the EU should go for its alternative plan of raising money itself — but diplomats said that option had been shelved as it needed unanimity and Hungary was firmly against.
Bubbling close to the surface of the EU’s discussion are the US efforts to forge a deal to end the war.
Zelensky said Ukrainian and US delegations would hold new talks on Friday and Saturday in the United States.
He said he wanted Washington to give more details on the guarantees it could offer to protect Ukraine from another invasion.
“What will the United States of America do if Russia comes again with aggression?” he asked. “What will these security guarantees do? How will they work?“
