Ron DeSantis calls Trump indictments biggest regret of the campaign
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis opened up Thursday about the one thing he wishes he could change about the 2024 campaign: Donald Trump’s legal trouble.
DeSantis ripped the four indictments against the 77-year-old as unfair and lamented that they had “distorted” the GOP primary process — while also warning that they could spell doom for Trump in the general election.
“I wish Trump hadn’t been indicted on any of this stuff,” DeSantis told Christian Broadcasting Network host David Brody.
“From [Manhattan DA] Alvin Bragg on, I’ve criticized the cases … that’s distorting justice, which is bad, but I also think it distorted the primary.”
The 45-year-old posited that the indictments both turbocharged Trump’s support among Republican voters and prevented his rivals from getting traction in the race.
“It also has just crowded out so much other stuff, and it’s sucked out a lot of oxygen,” DeSantis said.
Bragg secured the first indictment against Trump in late March, charging him with 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments to former adult film star Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal.
At that time, polls showed DeSantis within sight of Trump in the race for the Republican nomination.
But from the time of the first indictment, Trump’s lead has skyrocketed to the current 52.2-point spread in the RealClearPolitics average.
In all, Trump faces 91 criminal counts in two federal cases, a state case out of Georgia and the Manhattan case.
“I think the Democrats have had a plan on this,” DeSantis told Brody. “I think the media has a plan on this. And I think if it gets to the point where six months from now, Trump’s the presumptive nominee and he’s having to go through all this, they have a plan for how they’re going to ride this out.”
On Wednesday, the Sunshine State Republican criticized the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove the 45th president from the primary ballot, echoing a similar concern.
“They’re doing all this stuff to basically solidify support in the primary for him, get him into the general,” he said at a campaign stop in Iowa. “And the whole general election is going to be all this legal stuff.”
DeSantis has campaigned aggressively in Iowa, seeking to build momentum against Trump ahead of the Jan. 15 caucuses.
The Florida governor has scored coveted endorsements from Gov. Kim Reynolds and evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats.
However, the RCP average shows Trump leading DeSantis by 32.7 percentage points.
“Trump does obviously have a certain segment that’s very strong,” he explained. “A lot of these people, though, that come up in these polls, a lot of them are soft. I mean, they remember him, they liked his policies, but they are willing to vote for somebody else.”
Throughout the campaign, DeSantis has tried to drive home a message that Trump failed to deliver on his promises and would likely lose in the general election.
“Obviously, Trump could win the primary,” he told CBN. “I’m not convinced he can win the general.”
“Ron DeSanctus has plenty of things he wishes he could have changed, from hiring Jeff Roe to run his super PAC, to wearing awkward lifts in his shoes, to announcing his campaign on Spaces that was bangled from the start, to hiring his personal cronies with no presidential experience,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung told The Post in response.
“But above all, he probably wishes he wouldn’t have run in the first place so he wouldn’t have to humiliate himself on the campaign trail every single day.”
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