Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was among the attendees supporting former President Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee Wednesday.
“I think President Trump is the most demonized political figure in American history, and I know something about being demonized,” Blagojevich told NBC Chicago. “I think he’s a man of great courage and great strength. He showed that on Saturday.”
Blagojevich, who was the governor of Illinois from 2003-2009, has been a recent supporter of Trump’s after the former president commuted Blagojevich’s prison sentence in January 2020.
Blagojevich was impeached and removed from office in January 2009 when he was convicted in a public corruption trial for trying to sell the U.S. Senate seat of Barack Obama, who had just been elected President.
Blagojevich reported to prison in March 2012 after being convicted of 17 different counts, including 10 counts of wire fraud, three counts of bribery and four counts of extortion in July 2011.
The former Illinois governor served nearly eight years of his 14-year federal prison sentence.
“It’s a terrible thing that his political opponents have been doing to him. My party demonizing him the way that they have and literally putting a target on his back,” Blagojevich said. “When you call a guy Hitler and he’s not, when you say that the things that he’s doing are racist and they’re not — the inflammatory language.”
Blagojevich’s sentence commutation was far from the first time the former Illinois governor interacted with Trump, as Blagojevich was previously a contestant on season 3 of The Celebrity Apprentice. Blagojevich was fired by Trump in the fourth episode of the season.
He also recently showed support for Trump following his recent conviction on 34 felony counts in a hush money case in New York.
“I love Trump more today than ever!” Blagojevich wrote on social media in May. “When you’ve lived through it yourself you recognize when they do it to someone else. The political fix was in from the beginning. Disgraceful and corrupt convictions of the leading candidate from the opposition party by a handpicked politicized Dem judge who denied a former President a chance to put on a defense and allowed ridiculously unlawful jury instructions.”