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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is seen as Donald Trump’s biggest potential rival for the 2024 GOP nominee, came to the former president’s defense again on Saturday by launching broadsides at left-wing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg after indicting Trump on Thursday.
During a fundraiser in Garden City, N.Y., the GOP governor — who has yet to declare a presidential run and who has been verbally attacked by Trump — pronounced Bragg “a menace to society” and a threat to democratic government.
“This guy is all about politics,” DeSantis said, as reported by ADN America. “His whole thing is he doesn’t want people to be in jail, he wants to downgrade felonies to misdemeanors. Really, really dangerous stuff.
“And then he turns around, does a flimsy indictment against a former president of the United States. All these legal gymnastics to act like this is a felony – when almost every other time, he’s trying to take the felonies and downgrade them,” DeSantis added.
“This guy is doing politics! He has an agenda, that is not the rule of law,” DeSantis — who has a law degree from Harvard University — added, to a standing ovation from the attendees, the New York Post added.
DeSantis went on to tout his record as governor of the Sunshine State.
“For over four years, we don’t have leaks, we don’t have palace intrigue,” he told about 600 guests in the glass-walled atrium of the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, The Post noted further.
“We just execute the agenda,” he added.
During his 50-minute speech, the governor avoided any direct mention of Trump, who has nonetheless frequently criticized him. But DeSantis did lay into President Joe Biden.
“Our president, Joe Biden — he’s weak, he’s floundering,” DeSantis observed. “He’s really being controlled by the leftist elements of the Democratic Party.”
Trump, who is considered a leading candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is scheduled to appear for arraignment in New York City on Tuesday.
The specifics of the indictment have not been made public, as they usually remain confidential until the arraignment. However, it is anticipated that the charges will be related to Trump’s alleged involvement in the 2016 hush money scandal, which has been under investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for five years, Fox News noted.
If the indictment is related to the hush money scandal, it is expected that prosecutors will argue that the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels and the $150,000 payment to former Playboy model Karen McDougal were illegal campaign donations that aided Trump’s candidacy during the 2016 presidential election, the network continued.
During his speech, DeSantis also railed at Biden for his policies.
“If you look at our financial problems, we now are $31 trillion in debt. They did trillions and trillions of dollars of fiscal stimulus. The Fed printed trillions and trillions of dollars of money. What do you think is going to happen? Of course, you’re going to get inflation. They tried to say it was transitory. That didn’t work out for them. Then they spent last year hiking rates very quickly and that’s created dislocation in our economy,” he went on.
“The Democratic Party in the state of Florida is dead, dead, dead right now,” he continued, reflecting on his near-20-point reelection victory in November.
“We’ve really had a fundamental shift in our electorate. When I got elected governor, we had almost 300,000 more registered Democrats in Florida than Republicans. And we had never in the history of the state had more registered Republicans and registered Democrats,” he added. “Well, fast-forward four and a half years later, we now have almost 450,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats.”
“And President Reagan was right. The way to garner big support is to govern in bold colors, not with pale pastels. So we did that. And not only did folks in Florida who had usually voted the other way voted for us, we, of course, helped spark a major migration to our state, the likes of which we have never seen,” DeSantis noted further.
“And I don’t need to tell you about it in New York because you’ve seen it in New York and Illinois and California, states governed by leftist politicians imposing leftist ideology have driven good, productive people out of their jurisdiction,” he said.
