![\"Donald](\"https:\/\/d2eehagpk5cl65.cloudfront.net\/img\/c800x450-w800-q60\/uploads\/2024\/02\/upiphotostwo972488-800x450.jpg\")
<\/picture> <\/div>\nTaking crazy pills: <\/strong>Former President Donald Trump said<\/a> last evening that the civil fraud verdict<\/a> that will force him<\/a> to pony up $355 million for inflating his net worth to banks is actually “a form of Navalny” and “a form of communism or fascism.”<\/p>\n When asked about the Russian state’s imprisonment and killing of dissident Alexei Navalny, Trump responded: “It’s happening here.” The indictments are “all because of the fact that I’m in politics,” in his telling.<\/p>\n He made these comments last night during a Fox News town hall. On Truth Social, his own alternative social media platform,\u00a0Trump said, “the sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country.”<\/p>\n Alexei Navalny, who was reported dead on Friday, served as an opposition leader in a state that disallows opposition and legitimate voting. Navalny garnered a massive following\u2014more than 6 million YouTube followers<\/a>, for starters, with at least one video viewed 130 million times<\/a>\u2014by doing legitimately good journalism digging into the kleptocratic, repressive Putin regime. Navalny offered normal Russians legitimate, well-sourced explanations for why they are so poor: their leaders consistently abdicate responsibility, choosing to enrich themselves. Their leaders are content with everyday people living in squalor and dysfunction, as long as they<\/em> stay comfortable.<\/p>\n Running for office, and cutting through the state’s propaganda, made him so disfavored by the regime that he went into exile. Navalny returned to Russia in 2021 with full awareness that he would be locked up but a devout belief that he ought to continue his work domestically, displaying courage in the face of certain persecution. And sure enough, he was locked up, then sent to an even more remote prison camp called IK-3, in Kharp, which is in the Arctic Circle. His death there was reported last week, but the opposition movement will not die with him. “In killing Aleksei, Putin killed half of me, half of my heart and half of my soul,” said<\/a> his widow, Yulia, “but I have another half left\u2014and it is telling me I have no right to give up.”<\/p>\n Trump, on the other hand, misrepresented his net worth to banks, defrauding lenders (who…still had a responsibility to do due diligence, a fact ignored in much mainstream media reporting of the case). “Trump claimed his apartment in Manhattan’s Trump Tower was 30,000 square feet, nearly three times its actual size,” writes<\/a> Reason<\/em>‘s Jacob Sullum. “He valued Mar-a-Lago, his golf resort in Palm Beach, based on the assumption that it could be sold for residential purposes, which the deed precluded.” But “[New York Attorney General Letitia] James was not able to identify any damages to lenders or insurers,” writes<\/a> Sullum, and “the striking absence of any injury commensurate with the punishment lends credibility to Trump’s reflexive complaint that he is the victim of a partisan vendetta.”<\/p>\n Both things can be true, that Trump attracts politically motivated ire\u2014which attorneys general and judges are wrong to indulge\u2014and that he also did something wrong by inflating his net worth. But he’s a far cry from Navalny\u2014Trump enjoys self-dealing more than fact-finding and truth-telling\u2014and the way this went down, via the court system, where Trump had the right to defend himself, is a far cry from how “justice” gets dispensed in Russia\u2014by Putin, in penal colonies, via murders of anyone whose beliefs threaten the man in charge.<\/p>\n Scenes from New York:\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Nobody asked for this.<\/p>\n What are we doing as a city?? pic.twitter.com\/iaEBWGPMmh<\/a><\/p>\n — Cynical (@CynicalNYK) February 18, 2024<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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