Did Trump just compare himself to a pedophile priest?

In a bizarre moment on the campaign trail, Donald Trump appeared to compare himself to child sex abusers in churches.

Trump was speaking in Rochester, New Hampshire, just days before the state’s primary election was scheduled, and he started talking about how presidents should be allowed to commit whatever crimes they want. This is an argument that he is making in court to get out of criminal prosecution, and he has already made it clear that he believes that a president should even have the power to murder rival politicians without facing legal reprisal.

Related: Donald Trump accused of acting like “cartoonish villain” & “guiltiest man alive” in defamation trial

“The only way he could seem any more like a sexual predator is if he wore a raincoat to court and periodically flashed any woman who came into view.”

“But it’s a little bit like the police,” Trump told the crowd in New Hampshire this weekend, discussing his argument for absolute immunity from criminal charges for presidents. “So you have a rogue cop, you know what a rogue cop is? Very seldom, but you have bad people, you have people, no matter where, no matter what…”

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“In the church, you have some people that aren’t so good, right?” he said, likely alluding to the rather large problem of members of the clergy abusing their positions of power over people to sexually abuse children.

“But you have a rogue cop, or a bad apple or whatever, and what they do is they make it so that you catch, so that it can’t happen… And therefore everyone else is allowed to commit crimes, murders, at levels that we’ve never seen before,” Trump rambled. His argument is common on the right, that crime has gone up since the 2020 protests that followed George Floyd’s murder by police officer Derek Chauvin because police officers are under too much scrutiny to fight crime anymore.

“No, we’re going to have to do this, immunity for the president,” Trump said. “If you have a president that doesn’t have immunity, then he’s never going to be free to do anything because the opposing party will always indict him as soon as he leaves the White House.”

Trump on why he should have total immunity: A rogue cop.. you have bad people, no matter where, no matter what. In the church, you have some people that aren’t so good. pic.twitter.com/TADRzEZBsr

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 22, 2024

Of course, that has never happened before. No former president before Trump in the over two-hundred-year history of the United States has been indicted at all, and even Trump can’t claim that he was indicted by “the opposing party” since he is facing prosecution in multiple jurisdictions at several levels of government, none of which has been at the direction of President Joe Biden.

On X, people wondered why Trump – who has been accused of sexual assault by at least 26 women and was found by a jury last year to have sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll – would compare himself to child sex abusers in the church.

In a speech where he further defamed his rape victim while in the middle of a federal trial for defaming his rape victim, Trump’s closing argument to New Hampshire voters is that he is like a pedo priest and thus should have total immunity for his crimes. Normal stuff folks. https://t.co/3dvcTpLDHe

— Ben Meiselas (@meiselasb) January 22, 2024

So he went from comparing himself to rogue cops last night to pedophile priests tonight. https://t.co/V2NzQqcHvc

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) January 22, 2024

Did he just compare himself to pedophiles? https://t.co/NHAnA678ve

— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) January 22, 2024

The QAnon folks are going to have to explain why Trump is comparing himself to priests that sexually abuse kids.

— PatriotTakes