“People thought that could happen and it did happen,” Trump said, referring to Navalny’s death. “And it’s a horrible thing.”
Asked about outrage over Navalny’s death, Trump said, “It’s happening here.” He said his indictments are “all because of the fact that I’m in politics.”
Trump refrained from blaming Putin for the death, as President Joe Biden and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Trump’s sole remaining credible primary opponent, have done.
Trump’s remarks amounted to a doubling down on his controversial
post on Truth Social on Monday that “the sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country.”
Haley, the former South Carolina governor, has been hammering Trump on Russia in the days following Navalny’s death. In an interview earlier on Fox on Tuesday, she called Navalny “a hero who challenged Putin, lost his life because of it.”
“This is on the heels of Trump saying that he would encourage Putin to invade any NATO countries that didn’t pull their weight,” she said. Rather than criticizing Putin, she said of Trump, “He’s gonna compare himself to Navalny, and the victim that he is in his court cases?”
Then, as Trump’s town hall aired, Haley took to X, formerly Twitter, saying the comparison is “
not America First. That’s the kind of garbage you hear from liberals.”