Former President Donald Trump was firing broadsides Saturday as he rolled up more victories in his fight for the Republican nomination.
In a speech of more than an hour in Virginia, one of the states heading to the polls for Super Tuesday’s slew of primary contests, the 45th president took aim at political opponents across the country.
And Fani Willis, the disgraceful district attorney of Fulton, County, Georgia, made a tempting target.
Trump calling out Big Fani Willis! Epic! pic.twitter.com/UAcNl3FyIG
— @amuse (@amuse) March 3, 2024
The crowd at the Greater Richmond Convention Center — which had started lining up as early as 7 a.m. for the evening address, according to WTVR-TV in Richmond — joined in the laughter as Trump turned his stand-up comic style on the Georgia prosecutor.
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Willis is currently at the center of a court fight in Fulton County, where one of the defendants she indicted in an absurd, sweeping “racketeering” case against Trump and his supporters is seeking to have her removed from the case because she was in a romantic relationship with one of the attorneys she hired to prosecute it.
That attorney, Nathan Wade, is in the process of getting a divorce.
Both Willis and Wade have denied they were involved at the time Willis hired him, but cell phone records tell a different story.
“I didn’t know the gentleman,” Trump said Saturday, mockingly imitating Willis’ denials. “Oh, you have 2,000 phone calls. Three-thousand, five hundred text messages, how is it possible, in a short …”
Will Trump win the Republican nomination?
Yes: 99% (215 Votes)
No: 1% (2 Votes)
“I happen to have a very good relationship with a woman called Melania,” he said, drawing a raucous cheer from the crowd at the mention of the former first lady’s name.
“But I would venture to say in all the years that I’ve known her, I might not have called her 2,500 times. I know I didn’t send 3,500 text messages.”
Trump’s numbers actually undercounted the contacts between Willis and Wade. While they maintain they did not become lovers until early 2022 — after Willis hired Wade in November 2021 — cell phone records Trump’s legal team submitted to court show more than 2,000 phone calls and more than 12,000 text messages exchanged between the two in 2021 alone.
Most of the calls, according to a report by investigator Charles Mittelstadt, show the exchanges occurred in the “evening” hours, suggesting personal, rather than business, affairs.
Meanwhile, Wade, who had no prior experience with a major racketeering case, was paid more than $600,00 in taxpayer money after Willis hired him — money she apparently benefited from since the two vacationed together. (Willis claims she repaid Wade — in cash.)
As usual, Trump’s audience wasn’t limited to the crowd in the Richmond venue. Social media users who saw his lines were laughing, too.
Amazing I laughed my lungs out .. epic !
— Khaled (@Itskhaleds) March 3, 2024
Trump is a standup legend! he’s so good I bet @DaveChappelle is tuning in for inspiration!
— Prometheus_Fire (@prometheus_f1r3) March 3, 2024
But as some social media users noted, there’s more going on here than occasionally ribald humor.
This is not just funny; it’s important. If you never shoot back, the enemy can attack you at leisure.
Combat 101: Always return fire. pic.twitter.com/HniXyvSFJl
— Dr_Insensitive_Jerk (@DrInsensitive) March 3, 2024
What’s happening to Trump at the hands of district attorneys in Georgia and Manhattan, at the hands of New York Attorney General Letitia James and special counsel Jack Smith should be abhorrent to every American who cares about the rule of law.
What Democrats are doing with their politicization of the justice system at the local, state and federal levels is an outrage more befitting of the kind of banana republics Americans used to joke about before Democrats turned the United States into one.
The only real question is whether there is still time to change course.
Trump’s whole speech Saturday is below. The Willis lines start about the 14-minute mark. (Copy and paste this url into another browser.)
https://youtu.be/HGgpKBQQ_sw?si=IM7Tz1a1gE66P1cy
Trump’s road to the Republican nomination at this point is all but assured. On Saturday, in addition to his previous primary victories, he scored wins in multiple states — he dominated over former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, his sole remaining opposition, in the Republican caucuses in Idaho and Missouri and won 51 of the 55 delegates up for grabs in the Michigan nominating convention.
The results of Tuesday’s primaries in 15 states (plus American Samoa), are almost certain to make that inevitable.
The question that will be before Americans from now through November is whether they will allow the self-evidently corrupt Biden administration and his even more power-corrupted party to remain in control of the United States and in position to keep dragging the country down to a level of lawlessness more suited to jungle dictatorships in the Southern Hemisphere, or the Eastern Bloc of Cold War days, than to the leading country of the free world.
And that question is nothing to laugh at.
