On Tuesday, Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump, made incendiary comments attacking the integrity of the New York trial that saw Trump convicted by a jury of his peers on 34 criminal charges related to falsifying business records.
Legal experts have lauded the trial and the judge overseeing it, Justice Juan Merchan, as being fair and impartial toward Trump. Despite these assurances, however, Trump and his supporters — including Tuberville — have wrongly alleged that the Biden administration was somehow behind the trial in an attempt to hamper Trump’s chances in the 2024 presidential election.
Tuberville took that viewpoint to the extreme on Tuesday, suggesting to Newsmax viewers that the trial’s outcome poses an existential threat to the United States.
“The American people need to wake up. This is a war,” Tuberville sounded off. “This is a war on our constitutional rights, on our republic.”
The senator then proceeded to use “us versus them” rhetoric, insinuating that Democrats and those who supported Trump’s conviction could no longer be considered part of the country.
“I don’t call us Republicans or Democrats anymore. You’re either for our great country…or you’re against that,” Tuberville said.
Tuberville further claimed that Democrats “are worried about Republicans taking back over the country that we love.”
“And they’d better be worried about it,” he warned.
The former college football coach was also asked to respond to President Joe Biden’s comments yesterday, in which the Democratic nominee for president described Trump as a “convicted felon.”
“I hope they keep pushing that narrative. I think it’s a winning strategy, not for Democrats but for Americans,” Tuberville said, again alluding that Democrats are “against” the country.
Recent polling contradicts Tuberville’s assessment — according to surveys conducted after the trial, a majority of Americans are supportive of Trump’s conviction. A number of other polls show that there has been a slight shift in preference toward Biden in the days since the verdict was handed down.
Tuberville has repeatedly demonstrated his fealty to Trump, including after the former president made statements alluding to his desire to act as an authoritarian leader if he wins office again. Notably, the Alabama senator was among the first GOP lawmakers to travel to New York City during Trump’s trial to publicly condemn the proceedings.
There, Tuberville falsely alleged that jurors in the case weren’t U.S. citizens, and decried the “mental anguish” the trial was supposedly imposing on Trump. He also admitted that one of the reasons he traveled to New York was to help Trump “overcome” a court-imposed gag order— essentially to act as a conduit for disparaging the trial and its participants in ways Trump had been barred from doing.
Tuberville has defended Trump during some of his most controversial moments over the past year — including when the GOP candidate for president claimed that immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the country, echoing the rhetoric of fascists like Adolf Hitler and others. While other lawmakers criticized Trump for his statements, Tuberville said that he wished Trump’s comments had been “tougher” on immigrants.
Tuberville’s defense of Trump came just weeks after the former president said he would like to be a “dictator” on his first day back in office, and dubiously insisted that he would stop being a dictator shortly after.