Eric Trump has accused the Biden administration of attempting to drive a wedge between his father, President Donald Trump, and First Lady Melania Trump – claiming officials tried to orchestrate their divorce.
During a lengthy and wide-ranging rant about the political application of the U.S. justice system by successive governments, Trump, 41, made a series of claims about what happened during and after his father’s first term in office, including the 2022 raid on the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
The interview, with Newsmax presenter Rob Schmitt, first touched on the Democratic Party’s reaction to the indictment this week of former FBI director James Comey, who oversaw investigations into Hillary Clinton’s emails and Russian election interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Schmitt then played audio of Senator Chuck Schumer, who said of the president: “He has turned this Justice Department into his own political watchdog. It’s horrible. No president has done this. This is what autocrats do.”
Visibly reeling from the perceived irony of the statement, Trump said: “You don’t understand how humorous this is,” before rattling off a chronicle of alleged mistreatment the Trump family has experienced at the hands of the law.
Describing himself as “a perfect role model” and a “perfect model citizen”, Trump said the authorities “came after me like I was a dog”.
He continued: “They tried to impeach my father two times. They went after him for a Russia hoax that did not exist that was paid for by Hillary Clinton. The FBI and DOJ spied on my father’s campaign. They de-platformed him. They weaponized every attorney general and every district attorney around the country. They indicted him 91 times – 34 times in a bogus trial in New York City. They posted his mugshot. He’s the most recognisable person in the world. They posted his mugshot even though they didn’t need to, which totally backfired on him [Biden]. They gagged him over and over and over.
“They raided his home. They raided Mar-a-Lago. They tried to get him divorced, they tried to separate our family. They tried to go after our employees. They attacked us. They tried to bankrupt our company. They de-platformed us, they stripped every bank account away from me and the Trump Organization that you can imagine, and Merrick Garland was at the forefront of all of it, and Joe Biden was at the forefront of all of it when they raided our home, when they raided Mar-a-Lago, when they raided Melania’s closet. When they raided 16-year-old Barron’s room.”
He added, “And I get to hear from Chuck Schumer that my father weaponized justice? You must be kidding me.”
He then plugged his book and described his father’s ascendency to the presidency as “the greatest political movement in history,” while also appearing to lay the blame for two of the attempted assassinations of his father on the Democrats.
Trump’s claims about the Biden administration trying to get his father divorced come amid renewed scrutiny of the president and the first lady’s relationship.
The pair were said to have had a “heated exchange” before disembarking Marine One following the president’s address at the UN General Assembly, and it was also reported they had separate bedrooms during the state visit to Britain earlier this month.
In May, biographer Michael Wolff claimed the president and first lady are essentially “separated” following reports that at that time she had spent less than two weeks at the White House following the president’s inauguration.
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