While presidents of the past may have felt honored by receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, or the Four Freedoms Award, former President Donald Trump said Sunday that what he felt was “a great honor” was being indicted four times in one year.
“Four times!” he exclaimed in disbelief during an interview with Full Measure anchor Sharyl Attkisson. “I don’t think they would let it happen again, because the numbers have gone up. This is a great honor.”
Trump continues to lead the GOP primary field comfortably, even after facing two indictments in federal court and two in state court. All together, the twice-impeached former president has 91 charges against him—all felonies—and he has pled not guilty in the four jurisdictions in which he has been arrested and arraigned.
Trump’s supporters largely see his legal troubles as all the more reason to have his back, as one CBS News/YouGov poll from last month indicated. That same poll found, remarkably, that more than 70 percent of his supporters say he is source of “true” information, while 63 percent believed their own friends and family are.
“My numbers went up substantially because the American people know it’s a fake indictment,” Trump insisted during the amicable interview, during which Attkisson willingly let Trump regurgitate his false election claims.
“Look. I don’t know how your network feels about it, how your people feel about it. You can cut it out if you want,” he said. “We had a rigged election. Very simply, we had a rigged election.”
“My network doesn’t have any feelings about cutting something out,” replied Attkisson, a former CBS News investigative correspondent who quit in 2014 to form a second career out of criticizing the media, the Obama administration, and trying to show a causal link between vaccines and autism.
“Good,” Trump reacted. “Then you’ll leave it. Good. I like that better.”