Chris Wallace Blown Away by Trump Comparing Himself to Alexei Navalny: ‘Quite Extraordinary’

CNN’s Chris Wallace, who has obviously covered Donald Trump quite extensively, was nonetheless taken aback by the former president equating his legal woes with the death of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

The dissident died in a prison in the Arctic Circle last week. Trump, who has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, finally broke his silence on Monday, when he wrote on Truth Social:

The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country. It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction. Open Borders, Rigged Elections, and Grossly Unfair Courtroom Decisions are DESTROYING AMERICA. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION! MAGA2024

Wallace joined Monday’s edition of CNN NewsNight, where host Abby Phillip asked for his reaction.

“So, Chris, it took the former president almost three days after the death of Alexei Navalny to even so much as acknowledge it,” she said, noting Trump’s post. “Is Trump trying to create a way for his supporters, for Republicans to address the Navalny in some way without actually talking about Putin’s role in all of this?”

Wallace replied:

I’m not sure they even want to address Navalny. You know, it’s quite extraordinary that Donald Trump would somehow equate what he’s going through in American courts of law with the full due process that he’s accorded to what Navalny went through, being consigned to the gulag to a Siberian prison where he died under extremely mysterious and frankly, suspicious circumstances. Anybody who covered Trump during his presidency – let alone since – has to be struck by the very kid’s glove approach he has given to the Russian president throughout yeah, absolutely.

Trump is currently under criminal indictment in four jurisdictions. He is also appealing a $354 million civil fraud judgment against him. The former president has praised Putin and infamously agreed with the dictator that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election despite U.S. intelligence agencies concluding otherwise.

“President Putin says it’s not Russia,” then-President Trump said while standing next to Putin at a news conference in 2018. “I don’t see any reason why it would be.”

Watch above via CNN.