DeSantis was on the second of a two-day trip across Iowa, pressing his recent record in Florida of conservative education, abortion and gender policy…reports Asian Lite News
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is increasingly urging Republicans to avoid the temptation to refight the 2020 election next year, even as former President Donald Trump remains the dominant favorite for the 2024 GOP nomination on a message of vindicating his defeat.
Though DeSantis recently cast doubt on the false theories about the 2020 election at the heart of Trump’s federal indictment, DeSantis is saying in early-voting states that any focus except on defeating Democratic President Joe Biden would be dire for his party.
“If that is the choice, we are going to win and we are going to win across the country,” DeSantis told reporters Saturday after a campaign stop in northern Iowa. “If the election is a referendum on other things that are not forward-looking, then I’m afraid Republicans will lose.”
DeSantis was on the second of a two-day trip across Iowa, pressing his recent record in Florida of conservative education, abortion and gender policy, and an equally GOP crowd-pleasing agenda for the nation.
He ignited applause at a Saturday morning event in Cedar Falls promoting a balanced budget amendment, term limits for Congress and promising his audience of about 100 that he would declare a national emergency and dispatch the military to the U.S.-Mexico border upon taking office.
His labor to spur the party forward stood in sharp contrast to the Trump campaign’s release of an on-line ad attacking Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, who led the investigation that culminated in an indictment charging Trump with four felony counts related to his effort to reverse his 2020 election loss. The charges include conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.
Likewise, he boasted at an Alabama Republican Party fundraising dinner Friday that the indictment was a political asset. “Any time they file an indictment, we go way up in the polls,” Trump told his audience in Montgomery, Alabama. “One more indictment, and this election is closed out. Nobody has even a chance.”
On Saturday night in South Carolina, Trump kept up his false characterizations of the 2020 election while also maintaining the pressure on DeSantis, a distant runnerup that he said has “gotten so low in the polls we don’t watch him anymore.”
Of the new federal charges against him, Trump continued to argue that his political enemies were bringing the charges in an effort to keep him from returning to power.
“Only a party that cheats at elections would make it illegal to question those elections,” Trump told more than 1,000 attendees at the state Republican Party’s 56th annual Silver Elephant Gala. “They don’t go after the people that rigged the election — they go after the people that want to find out what the hell happened.”
Still, DeSantis has gone marginally further in recent days in discussing Trump’s defeat, though more typically when talking to the media after campaign events than during events with voters, many of whom remain sympathetic to Trump.
During Saturday morning campaign events, he blasted “weaponization” of federal agencies, a term that resonates with Republicans sympathetic to the belief that the Justice Department has persecuted Trump.
But after a stop to meet voters at a small-town restaurant, DeSantis sidestepped when asked if he would have certified the 2020 Electoral College vote as former Vice President Mike Pence did the day the pro-Trump rioters attacked and breached the Capitol.
‘Need one more indictment to close out this election’
Hitting out at the Biden administration, former United States President Donald Trump on Friday said that he wears the indictments as a “badge of honour” and he needs just one more to “close out” the upcoming presidential elections, New York Post reported.
He was delivering a speech at the annual Alabama GOP dinner in Montgomery on Friday.
Trump said that the growing list of charges he faces has only helped his campaign and said he considers each indictment a “truly great badge of honour.”
“It’s not going to make any impact, because every time they file an indictment we go way up in the polls,” New York Post quoted Trump, the front-running Republican presidential candidate, saying to the crowd.
“We need one more indictment to close out this election,” he joked, to cheers. “One more indictment and this election is closed out, nobody has even a chance.”
Trump has been indicted three times since March. The latest charges, filed Tuesday after an investigation by special counsel Jack Smith, accuse Trump of knowingly spreading false information about widespread voter fraud after he lost the 2020 election to President Biden.
Trump told the crowd Friday that he referred to the indictments as “a badge of honour” because he is “being indicted for you.”
“So, thanks a lot,” he said.
Slamming the Biden government further, Trump called the Justice Department “corrupt”, saying charges could have been filed against him years ago, but instead “they waited right until the middle of the election”. (ANI)
“They waited until I became the dominant force in the polls because we’re dominating everyone, including Biden, in the polls. And then they filed them all, everyone, one of them, at the same time,” New York Post quoted Trump as saying.
The former President blasted the trio of indictments as “election interference” and called the latest case “an outrageous criminalization of political speech.”
“This ridiculous indictment against us, it’s not a legal case — it’s an act of desperation by a failed and disgraced Joe Biden and his radical thugs,” Trump said.
“The reason this is happening is simple: Joe Biden is the most incompetent and at the same time the most corrupt president in the history of the United States,” the New York Post quoted Trump as saying.
“Every time more Biden corruption is exposed his henchmen indict me because they want to knock out the bad publicity,” he said, calling it a “cover-up” for the “Biden crime family.”
Earlier in the day, Trump posted on his Truth Social a vague warning: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU.”
However, he had reportedly been warned not to issue threats by the judge during Thursday’s arraignment, as per New York Post.
Earlier on Friday, Trump also pleaded not guilty to the new charges special counsel Jack Smith brought against him in the case alleging mishandling of classified documents from his time in the White House, CNN reported.
The filing marked the second time in 24 hours that the former president entered a ‘not guilty’ plea, following his arraignment Thursday in the special counsel’s separate investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Earlier on Thursday, Trump pleaded not guilty to four criminal charges related to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. (ANI)