While voting in Florida on Tuesday in the presidential primary, Donald Trump made a rare appearance alongside his wife Melania Trump as he criticized Peter Navarro’s prison sentence for Vice President Mike Pence – and reaffirmed why he believes Jewish Americans shouldn’t vote for the Democrats.
“I voted for Donald Trump,” he said as he walked away laughing after speaking to reporters outside the polling station not far from his Mar-a-Lago home.
Earlier, as he entered the polling station, Trump was asked whether the Supreme Court should have intervened and released Navarro, who is serving four months, from prison.
Navarro was convicted in September of two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to provide testimony and documents to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump on Tuesday called his prison sentence “a disgrace” and his unsuccessful legal battle “a disgrace.”
“Peter was treated very unfairly, a great patriot,” Trump said when asked if he would pardon Navarro if he were re-elected to the White House.
Trump denied any knowledge of whether his convicted former campaign manager Paul Manafort would join his 2024 bid, saying only that he was another person who had been “mistreated.”
“I do not know anything about it. … But we’ll see what happens with it,” Trump said.
Asked by ABC News what his reaction was to Pence’s refusal to endorse him, Trump said: “I don’t give a damn.”
“We need strong people in this country. We don’t need weak people,” he said.
Melania Trump, who appeared alongside her husband, teased whether or not she would attend campaign appearances alongside the former president.
“Hang in there,” she said.
Former President Donald Trump speaks to the press as his wife Melania Trump looks on after voting in the primary election in West Palm Beach, Florida, March 19, 2024.
Pool via ABC News
Donald Trump also railed against his civil fraud case in New York on Tuesday when asked whether he would be able to pay about $460 million in bail while he appeals the verdict against him.
“This was a rigged trial,” he claimed, which prosecutors have denied.
“We’ll see how the courts decide,” he said.
Trump also escalated his comments about why Jewish Americans should not support Democrats, including attacking Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, whom he called a “disgrace to Israel.”
In a radio interview on Monday, Trump, echoing previous comments, said that Jewish Americans who vote for Democrats – amid Israel’s war on Hamas and other tensions in the Middle East – “hate” their religion and Israel and that they “hate it.” should be”. ashamed of themselves.”
“I think the Democrats have been very, very anti-Jewish people,” Trump argued Tuesday.
President Joe Biden’s campaign has pushed back, saying in a statement in part: “The only person who should be ashamed here is Donald Trump.”
And asked Tuesday about a possible nationwide 15-week abortion ban, Trump said: “We’ll talk about it soon.”
However, when Trump was pressed again on the timeline, he dodged it.
He also renewed claims about immigrants who are in the country illegally and said he would deport them if he was president, although he did not explain how he would carry out such a “mass deportation.”
Separately, Trump weighed in on several topics in a British television interview also on Tuesday, including the controversy sparked when Kate Middleton apologized for sharing an edited photo of her with her children.
“All the doctors,” Trump said on GB News, adding: “I don’t understand why there can be so much outcry about this.”
He also said he was a “big fan of the concept of the royal family” and repeatedly praised the late Queen Elizabeth.
Trump also praised King Charles, calling him a “wonderful guy” and saying they “got along” even though Charles was “a little more into environmental restrictions than I was.”