Former president Trump released a campaign ad-style video on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Tuesday following the FBI’s raid on his private Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago.
The three-minute video went live after federal agents stormed his Palm Beach home, with a search warrant reportedly obtained in the county, to scour for classified documents Trump allegedly took from the White House at the close of his presidency. Throughout 2021, the National Archives and Records Administration had been in contact with Trump about retrieving such records from the estate, 15 boxes of which it recovered in January including items “marked as classified national security information.”
The theme of the video was national decline, and the many domestic and foreign calamities under the Biden administration that Trump claims precipitated it.
“We are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation. We are a nation that has the highest inflation in over 4o years. Where the stock market just finished the worst half of the year in more than five decades. We are a nation that has the highest energy cost in its history and we are no longer energy independent or energy dominant which we wee just two short years ago,” Trump said in the ad, over sound effects of a thunderstorm.
“We are a nation that’s surrendered in Afghanistan, leaving behind dead soldiers, Americans, and 80 billion dollars of the finest military equipment in the world. We are a country that allowed Russia to devastate a country, killing hundreds of thousands of people and it will only get worse,” he added.
The FBI’s barging into a former president’s home to comb through files, an unprecedented move for federal authorities, came as a shock to Trump and much of the country Monday. “After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate,” Trump said in a statement.
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