Former President Donald Trump spent his weekly day off from his Manhattan hush money criminal trial at a Wisconsin campaign rally on Wednesday railing against the judge and pushing back on Democrats’ argument that Republican restrictions on abortion are too harsh.

He did so by accusing Judge Juan Merchan of being “crooked” and by falsely accusing Democrats of wanting abortion policies that “will allow execution of a baby even after birth.”

There is no policy proposal by Democrats to execute infants after birth. Killing a newborn is illegal, as is murder of a person of any age, throughout the entire United States.

“You have a situation where the Democrats will allow it in the seventh, eighth, ninth month, and will allow execution of a baby even after birth,” Trump said in Waukesha. “When you can do abortion, or killing or execution, at that point in a life cycle, you just can't do that.”

Abortions at or after 21 weeks of pregnancy “are uncommon and represent 1% of all abortions in the U.S.,” according to the health care nonprofit KFF. They are only legal in some states, KFF said in a report earlier this year.

Democrats have hit Trump hard on abortion policy, pinning the most extreme state laws and proposals on the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee. The former president enjoys bragging about appointing three of the six conservative justices who made up the Supreme Court majority that overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, but has tried to distance himself from his party’s more unpopular ideas.

In a magazine interview published on Tuesday, Trump said he would leave it up to the states if they wanted to monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute them for abortions.

Trump’s remarks in Wisconsin came on the day Florida’s six-week abortion ban kicked in and the day Arizona lawmakers were working to repeal a near-total abortion ban that took effect earlier this year that was written in 1864.

“Here’s what a second Trump term looks like: more bans, more suffering, less freedom,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in Jacksonville earlier on Wednesday, speaking out against the Florida ban. “As of this morning, four million women in this state woke up with fewer reproductive freedoms than they had last night. This is the new reality under a Trump abortion ban.” 

The politics of abortion are not in Trump’s favor: two-thirds of Americans, including 67% of independents, would support a federal law codifying the right to an abortion, according to a February poll from KFF. And last month, Fox News found a record high number of voters — 59% —  believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

But he tried to insist to his supporters in Wisconsin on Wednesday that the elimination of a federal right to an abortion, a goal sought for half a century by conservatives, was a political winner. 

“From the great legal experts to everybody: Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, they wanted to get abortion out of the federal government. Everybody wanted that. That was uniform,” Trump said. “Basically the states decide on abortion, and people are absolutely thrilled with the way that's going on.”

“I think we did a very good job,” he added. “You think that was on the teleprompter? I don't think so. I don't think so. No, I thought it was a good thing to talk about.”

Trump was in Wisconsin on Wednesday afternoon before another rally in Michigan that evening. But on Thursday, he will be back in a Manhattan criminal courtroom to be present for the first of his four criminal prosecutions to go to trial. On Tuesday, the judge on the case fined the former president — the first in U.S. history to be criminally tried — $9,000 and held him in contempt for repeated violations of a gag order prohibiting public attacks by Trump on witnesses and the judge’s family members.

“I have a crooked judge. He's a totally conflicted judge,” Trump said after insisting “there’s no crime.”

“Can you imagine my mother and father saying, ‘I can't believe it, my son got indicted more than Al Capone. Scarface,'" he added.

Trump has said Merchan is biased because of his daughter, who works as a Democratic Party operative. Merchan, who has insisted he can be impartial, also donated $15 to Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign. 

Trump faces 34 felony charges of falsifying business records in an alleged attempt to unduly influence the 2016 presidential election by paying off an adult film actress who says she had an affair with the married business mogul a decade earlier. 

“Every time the radical left Democrats, Marxists, communists and fascists indict me, I consider it a great badge of honor. Thank you very much. Because I'm being indicted for you,” Trump said to cheers. “In the end, they’re not after me. They're after you. I just happened to be standing in the way, and I always will.”

In Michigan, Trump promises to 'prevent World War III'

Trump continued his attacks on those he says are responsible for his legal troubles a few hours later at a rally in Saginaw, Michigan.

"I have come here today from New York City where I'm being forced to sit for days on end in a kangaroo courtroom, with a corrupt and conflicted judge, enduring a Biden sideshow trial, at the hands of a Marxist District Attorney — Soros backed — who's taking orders from the Biden administration," Trump insisted. "They're — all of these trials, by the way — so if I didn't run, or if I came in fourth, I'd have no problem right now."

The former president attacked the leadership of the United Auto Workers, telling workers that union boss Shawn Fain "really let you down," in negotiations with the Big Three automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — creating a situation that "just did that so good for China, and it's so bad for Michigan."

He also decried a recent Biden administration regulation that will gradually tighten limits on emissions with the goal of increasing electric vehicles and hybrids to a majority of all new car sales by 2032.

Trump then asserted that he would be an exceptional leader on the world stage.

"Biden's weakness has led the planet to the edge of nuclear war. I will bring the world glorious new peace and I will make the following statement. I am the only that can say this, I believe — I know them all, and they respect me; they don't respect our country anymore, it's a country that's in decline, but they respect me, and we're gonna have it back real soon. We're gonna have a great country real soon. But I'll say this: I will prevent World War III. I'm the only one that's going to do it," Trump said, before blaming Biden for Russia attacking Ukraine, for Israel being attacked by Iran on Oct. 7, insisting that Iran funded Hamas' attack on Israel, which killed nearly 1,200 people.

Trump also promised to sign a "new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity and any other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content onto the lives of our children," including a promise to "keep men out of women's sports day one."

He also insisted that transgender athletes are "shattering" records in women's sports, though there's little evidence to support the idea that there is widespread dominance of women's sports by transgender athletes. Recently, a trans woman broke two school track and field records at the Rochester Institute of Technology in January; a second trans woman, Meghan Cortez-Fields, broke two school records for Ramapo College of New Jersey in January. Both are NCAA Division III programs, and neither are powerhouses in the collegiate athletics pyramid.