Former President Donald Trump likened himself to the late South African leader Nelson Mandela as he ranted on social media about his various court cases on Saturday.
The presumptive GOP presidential nominee took aim at Judge Juan Merchan, who’s overseeing Trump’s New York hush money case, writing that it’d be a “GREAT HONOR” to go to jail for violating a gag order against him in the upcoming trial.
“If this Partisan Hack wants to put me in the ‘clink’ for speaking the open and obvious TRUTH, I will gladly become a Modern Day Nelson Mandela — It will be my GREAT HONOR,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
He continued, “We have to Save our Country from these Political Operatives masquerading as Prosecutors and Judges, and I am willing to sacrifice my Freedom for that worthy cause.”
The former president has previously compared himself to Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison over his anti-apartheid activism.
Trump told a New Hampshire crowd in October that he wouldn’t “mind being Nelson Mandela” while declaring himself to be a victim of political persecution.
Last month, the former president attacked Merchan and his daughter on Truth Social after Merchan imposed a gag order on Trump that prevented him from speaking about the case. On Monday, the judge expanded the gag order amid Trump’s attacks against Merchan and his family.
Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney and currently a law professor at the University of Michigan, told MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart that Trump’s recent posts could lead to a stricter gag order, but it’s the “kind of stuff” the judge is allowing him to say.
“If it is simply sort of political speech that isn’t targeting anybody in particular, I think the judge is going to give him a lot of leeway to say this,” McQuade said on Saturday.
“What the gag order specifically tries to preclude is doing anything that might intimidate witnesses, threaten witnesses or call into question the motives of the parties here. I think this kind of thing is probably going to be allowed to pass,” she added.