Former President Donald Trump took the stage during a campaign event in Iowa during a rather ironic line of the Brooks & Dunn song, Only In America.
The Republican National Party hosted the 2023 Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines, Iowa, Friday night, which featured speeches from 13 GOP presidential candidates running in the 2024 primaries.
In a video posted to Twitter by Politico reporter Natalie Allison, Trump is seen walking toward the podium for his allotted 10 minutes on stage while the lines, “One could end up going to prison, one just might be president,” play in the background. According to Allison’s report, all candidates who attended the event walked out to the same song.
As Trump took the stage in Iowa, this ironic line played: “One could end up going to prison, one just might be president.”
He had to walk out to Brooks & Dunn (like all candidates tonight) instead of his usual Lee Greenwood. pic.twitter.com/Ial80MXp76
— Natalie Allison (@natalie_allison) July 29, 2023
Friday’s event comes just a day after three additional charges were announced in the Department of Justice (DOJ) probe into Trump’s handling of classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago estate in August. The former president is now facing 40 federal counts related to willfully retaining top-secret information and obstructing government efforts to retrieve the materials.
Trump previously became the first former U.S. president in history to face criminal charges, following an investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office into several hush money payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign. Prosecutors charged the former president with falsifying business records to conceal payments made to former adult-film star Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal.
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Charges are also expected to be filed against Trump in two separate cases involving efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who’s been investigating election interference efforts in Georgia, is expected to bring charges against Trump in the coming weeks. Special Counsel Jack Smith has also indicated that the DOJ may be coming to a close in its investigation into Trump’s actions leading up to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The former president maintains that all legal challenges against him are part of a “witch hunt” to upset his reelection chances, where he stands as the front-runner for the next GOP presidential nomination.
During his brief speech on Friday, Trump reiterated his unfounded claim that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” against him, and said that President Joe Biden is attempting to “weaponize” federal agencies like the DOJ against political opponents like himself.
“And by the way, if I weren’t running, I would have nobody coming after me,” the former president added. “Or if I was losing by a lot, I would have nobody coming after me.”
Newsweek reached out to Trump’s campaign via email Friday night for comment.