At Mar-a-Lago, Trump rages against Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, calls arrest an ‘insult to our country’

Hours after being arraigned in New York City, former President Donald Trump took to his Mar-a-Lago, Fla., residence to slam the Manhattan district attorney, assert his innocence and denounce his indictment as an “insult to our country.”

“I never thought anything like this could happen in America,” he said in campaign-style, grievance-filled remarks before a crowd of supporters. “The only crime that I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it.”

Trump arrived at Palm Beach International Airport around 6:40 p.m., the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported.

Trump had ignored reporters in Manhattan, where he is widely loathed, before returning by plane to Florida, a state he won in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.

He described Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, the Harlem Democrat who brought criminal charges against him, as a “radical left George Soros-backed prosecutor.” Soros, a billionaire Democratic megadonor, recently asserted that he did not donate to Bragg’s 2021 campaign.

At one point in his speech, he called Bragg, who is Black, a “reverse racist.” The ex-president previously smeared the prosecutor as an “animal,” drawing accusations that he was being racist himself.

“Virtually everyone who has looked at this case, including RINOS and hardcore Democrats, say that there is no crime, and that it should never have been brought,” said Trump, who is running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. “Even people who are not big fans have said this is not the right thing to do.”

Earlier in the day, Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records linked to a hush money payment his former fixer Michael Cohen fashioned for Stormy Daniels near the end of the 2016 presidential campaign.

“This is not the right thing to do,” Trump, the first U.S. president ever indicted, said in his speech. “The world is already laughing at us for so many reasons, like our open borders, our incompetent withdrawal from Afghanistan.”

He called Justice Juan Merchan, a respected Manhattan Supreme Court judge who is overseeing the case, as a “Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family.” Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina has said Merchan has a “very good reputation.”

The 76-year-old Republican, returning to primetime TV after two years in which networks have largely avoided broadcasting his fact-challenged screeds, also attacked other criminal inquiries encircling him.

He described his two impeachments as “Impeachment Hoax No. 1″ and “Impeachment Hoax No. 2″ He reiterated his lies about the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to President Biden but says he won.

But he said Democrats had “really stepped up their efforts by indicting the 45th president of the United States, who received 75 million votes … more than any sitting president in the history of our country.”

Trump did win nearly 75 million votes in the popular vote, but Biden, who has said he plans to run for reelection, won more than 81 million.

Trump’s speech lasted just 25 minutes — unusually brief remarks for the famously verbose former commander-in-chief.