Former US President Donald Trump calls his opponents “scum” in an incendiary post Monday, the day Americans remember their fallen soldiers and the eve of the start of arguments in his criminal trial in New York.
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“Happy Memorial Day to everyone, including the human scum who are hell-bent on destroying what was once our great country, and to the New York federal judge of the radical left who hates me so much…” wrote the Republican candidate on his Truth Social network, before engaging in a long tirade about his legal woes.
Mr. Trump has had trouble with Judge Juan Merchan who is presiding over his trial in New York and who has already fined him for contempt.
By contrast, Democratic President Joe Biden, to whom he will be opposed in the November presidential election, gave a speech at around the same time at Arlington Cemetery, near Washington, in memory of the combatants who died in service.
Memorial Day is traditionally a public holiday in the United States and the long weekend marks the start of the summer season.
Donald Trump is expected in New York court on Tuesday for the final stretch of his trial where he could become the first former president in the history of the United States to be convicted by the criminal justice system.
- Listen to the American political column with Professor Luc Laliberté via QUB :
In question, the payment of 130,000 dollars, disguised as legal fees, to a former star of pornographic films, Stormy Daniels, to silence a sexual relationship, which he denies.
In his post, Mr. Trump denounces his civil conviction last January to pay damages to the author E. Jean Carroll for having defamed her, against a backdrop of accusations of rape in the 1990s, as well as in February his conviction to several million dollars in fines for financial fraud for having illegally inflated the value of his real estate assets. Both cases went to court in New York and Mr. Trump appealed.
