Former president Donald Trump said he wouldn’t drop out of the 2024 race even if convicted of a crime.
“I’d never drop out, it’s not my thing,” Trump said in an interview that aired Tuesday with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. “I wouldn’t do it.”
Former President Donald Trump arrives at court on April 4, in New York. Trump is the first former president ever to be charged with a crime. Mary Altaffer/Associated Press
The interview was Trump’s first national media appearance since he was indicted last week in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, who alleges she had a sexual encounter with Trump.
Trump pleaded not guilty and has attacked the prosecution as politically motivated, including by singling out the district attorney and the judge and their families in personal terms. Trump said in March that he would keep running if indicted, but he had not previously addressed a potential conviction.
There is no barrier to someone running for president if convicted of a crime, as socialist Eugene V. Debs did in 1920 while imprisoned for speaking out against the draft in World War I.
In addition to the New York indictment, Trump faces ongoing criminal investigations by the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., over Trump’s pressure on officials to overturn the 2020 election results there and two separate federal probes into Trump allies’ efforts to submit phony electoral college slates and into his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House. Both of the latter investigations are overseen by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith.
“They don’t want to run against me,” Trump said in the interview, suggesting the investigations were meant to hobble his campaign.
Most of the interview covered international affairs, with Trump reiterating favorable views of foreign dictators. He called Russian President Vladimir Putin “very smart” and said the two “had a very good relationship.” Trump repeatedly complimented Russia’s nuclear capabilities as on par with those of the United States. As for the people who investigated alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election to benefit him, Trump said they should be arrested for “treason.”
He called the leaders of Saudi Arabia – whose crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, approved the killing of Washington Post opinion contributor Jamal Khashoggi – “great people.” Trump said he and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un “get along great to this day.” And he praised Chinese President Xi Jinping as a “brilliant man” who has “the look, the brain, the whole thing.”
Carlson lauded Trump as “moderate, sensible and wise.” Messages released in defamation litigation by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News showed Carlson in early 2021 saying of Trump, “I hate him passionately” and that he looked forward to being able to ignore him.
“He doesn’t feel that way now,” Trump said of Carlson, speaking to reporters on his plane last month. “If you ask Tucker now, he likes Trump. He gets it.”
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