Donald Trump calls judge "crooked" during campaign stop in Michigan
Former President Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail Wednesday in Michigan and called the judge presiding over his hush money trial "crooked" after he was held in contempt of court and threatened with jail time for violating a gag order.
Trump's remarks at events in the battleground states of Wisconsin and Michigan were being closely watched after he received a $9,000 fine for making public statements about people connected to the criminal case.
In imposing the fine for posts on Trump's Truth Social account and campaign website, Judge Juan M. Merchan said that if Trump continued to violate his orders, he would "impose an incarceratory punishment."
"There is no crime. I have a crooked judge. He's a totally conflicted judge," Trump said speaking to supporters at an event in Waukesha, Wisconsin, claiming again that this and other cases against him are led by the White House to undermine his campaign.
The former president is running for a second term as the presumptive Republican nominee while at the same time fighting felony charges in New York. Trump frequently goes after Merchan, prosecutors and potential witnesses at his rallies and on social media, attack lines that play well with his supporters but that have potentially put him in further legal jeopardy.
Later at a rally in Freeland, Michigan, at Avflight Saginaw, Trump said he was being forced to spend days in a "kangaroo court room," and claimed without evidence the district attorney was taking orders from the Biden administration.
"I've got to do two of these things a day. You know why? Because I'm in New York all the time with the Biden trial," he said. "It's a fake trial. They do it to try and take your powers away, try and take your candidate away."
Trump's trial proceedings taking bite out of campaign schedule
Even before the hush money trial got underway on April 15, Trump has held just a handful of public campaign events since becoming his party's presumptive nominee in March.
The gag order bars him from making public statements about witnesses, jurors and some others connected to his hush money case. Trump is still free to criticize the judge and the district attorney.
Trump insists he is merely exercising his free speech rights, but the offending posts from his Truth Social account and campaign website were taken down. Merchan is weighing other alleged gag-order violations and will hear arguments on Thursday.
Attendees agreed he is being unfairly prosecuted, contending the trial and gag order were designed to distract him.
"It's a trial looking for a crime," said Ray Hanson, of Hartford. Hanson said he expected Trump's lawyers would "keep him in line" so he doesn't violate the gag order, as much as he likely wants to talk about the trial.
Manhattan prosecutors have argued Trump and his associates took part in an illegal scheme to influence the 2016 presidential campaign by purchasing and then burying negative stories. He has pleaded not guilty.
Trump focuses on Midwest swing states in latest stops
Trump's visits to Wisconsin and Michigan mark his second trip to the swing states in just a month. For the previous rallies, the former president largely focused on immigration, referring to people who are in the U.S. illegally and who are suspected of crimes as "animals."
Wednesday's visit was Trump's third to Michigan in 2024 and his first since speaking in Grand Rapids on April 2. During that April visit, Trump went after President Joe Biden on border and crime and focused much of his speech on the murder of Ruby Garcia, a Michigan woman who was found dead on the side of a Grand Rapids highway in March 2024.
Brandon Ortiz-Vite, who law enforcement says is a citizen of Mexico and had previously been deported after a drunk driving arrest, told authorities that he shot Garcia multiple times during an argument before disposing of her body on the side of the highway. Garcia and Ortiz-Vite had been in a relationship.
Democrats are hoping to remind voters ahead of these visits about Trump's position on abortion, which Trump has been openly concerned about being a political liability for him and Republicans.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer met on Wednesday with half a dozen women, including a family doctor, and warned that a second Trump term would threaten abortion rights even in her state, which enshrined those rights in its state constitution after the Supreme Court overturned national rights to the procedure.
Whitmer appeared with the women at a bookstore in Flint surrounded by signs that read "Stop Trump's Attacks on Health Care" and "Stop Trump's Abortion Ban." She told reporters not to believe Trump's contention in a Time Magazine interview that Republicans would never have enough votes in the U.S. Senate to pass a national abortion ban.
"We cannot trust anything that Donald Trump says when it comes to abortion. So no one should take any comfort in the fact that, yes, he wants an abortion ban, but he won't get it because he doesn't think we'll have 60 votes in the Senate. Baloney," she said.
Polls show Trump, Biden in tight races in swing states
Wisconsin and Michigan are among a handful of battleground states expected to decide the 2024 election.
For Trump to win both states, he must do well in suburban areas like the areas outside of Milwaukee and Saginaw, Michigan, where he visited Wednesday. He underperformed in suburban areas during this year's primary even as he dominated the Republican field overall.
Trump claimed Saginaw County in 2016 by a margin of 1,073 votes but lost the county to Mr. Biden in the 2020 election, with Mr. Biden winning by 303 votes.
A CBS News poll of registered voters in Michigan found that of those likely to cast their ballot in November, 51% said they would vote for Biden.
That same poll found that in a four-way ballot test, with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Jill Stein included, the gap between Mr. Biden and Trump remains at 2%, with 45% saying they would vote for the current president. However, Kennedy is polling at 9%, with most of those picking Kennedy having backed Trump in a two-way test with Mr. Biden.
The CBS News poll found that better than 60% of registered voters surveyed in the swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin say the U.S. economy was in better shape under Trump. The economy, inflation and state of democracy are the top three motivating voting factors for those surveyed in Michigan.
Trump has also repeatedly falsely said that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Trump's losses in battleground states in 2020 have withstood recounts, audits and reviews by the Justice Department and outside observers.
Last week, a Michigan state investigator testified that he considers Trump and former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, as co-conspirators in a scheme to claim that the former president had won Michigan in 2020.
In an interview Wednesday with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Trump did not commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election.
"If everything's honest, I'll gladly accept the results. I don't change on that," Trump said. "If it's not, you have to fight for the right of the country."