At Donor Retreat, Trump Calls Biden Administration the ‘Gestapo’

Fresh from his criminal trial in New York, Donald J. Trump delivered a frustrated and often obscene speech, lasting roughly 75 minutes, at a Republican National Committee donor retreat in Florida on Saturday, attacking one of the prosecutors pursuing him and comparing President Biden’s administration to the Nazis.

“These people are running a Gestapo administration,” Mr. Trump told donors who attended the event at Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Palm Beach, Fla., according to an audio recording obtained by The New York Times. “And it’s the only thing they have. And it’s the only way they’re going to win, in their opinion, and it’s actually killing them. But it doesn’t bother me.”

Before making the comparison, Mr. Trump baselessly insisted that the various indictments against him and his allies in several states were being orchestrated by the Biden administration.

He said that, before his indictment, he was gentler on Mr. Biden, despite the outcome of the 2020 election. “You have to respect the office of the presidency,” Mr. Trump said. “And I never talk to him like this.”

Mr. Trump entered the event to the recording of the national anthem that he made with a group of people arrested in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob seeking to disrupt the certification of Mr. Biden’s electoral college win. Mr. Trump praised the song.

In his speech, he complained repeatedly about the criminal trial in Manhattan, to which he will return on Monday, insisted that Democrats use “welfare” to cheat in elections and said he would need an attorney general with “courage” as he mocked his former attorney general, William P. Barr, who recently endorsed Mr. Trump after having spoken critically of him since the administration ended.