Days after the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was first reported, Donald Trump broke his silence in a social media post Monday that barely mentioned Navalny and that did not condemn President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Instead, he used Navalny’s death to suggest that his own legal battles amounted to political persecution.
It was a note he hit first Sunday, when he shared screenshots of an opinion essay that compared his relationship with President Joe Biden to the one between Navalny and Putin.
“The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country,” the former president wrote on Truth Social on Monday. He pointed to what he called “CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction.”
But the winding social media post contained no reference to Putin, who has drawn widespread condemnation from politicians in the United States and abroad amid speculation that he or the Russian government had a hand in Navalny’s death. Instead, Trump cited “Open Borders, Rigged Elections, and Grossly Unfair Courtroom Decisions” in casting the U.S., in all capital letters, as a “nation in decline, a failing nation.”
The former president has a long history of complimenting Putin, calling him “pretty smart” even as Russia prepared to invade Ukraine.