South Florida newspaper rips state Republicans for defending Trump’s 'malice to the Constitution'

03 August 2023

Florida, for many years, was considered the consummate swing state. But when Gov. Ron DeSantis ran as a far-right culture warrior in 2022 and was reelected by 19 percent, many pundits declared that Florida's days as a swing state were over — that it had gone deep red.

On August 1, the news broke that Palm Beach resident Donald Trump had been indicted on four federal charges connected to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. And it didn't take Florida Republicans, from DeSantis to Sen. Marco Rubio to Rep. Matt Gaetz, long to rush to Trump's defense.

In an editorial published on August 2, the South Florida Sun Sentinel's editorial board lays out some reasons why special counsel Jack Smith's charges in the Trump case are so disturbing — and why it is "appalling" for Florida Republicans to reflexively defend Trump.

"Donald J. Trump's third indictment is truly historic, yet that seems inadequate to the gravity of the most perilous crisis to befall American democracy since the Civil War," the Sun Sentinel board writes. "The charges are devastating in their simplicity: Trump engaged in a criminal conspiracy to overthrow the government because the American people rejected his bid to stay in office. As laid out in a 45-page indictment, the attack on the U.S. Capitol was merely the last step in a long chain of conspiracy toward far greater crimes."

The board continues, "They included outrageous claims that Trump and his cadre of co-conspirators knew were false. Efforts to intimidate elections officials in seven states and Congress into decertifying election results they knew to be accurate. A calculated attack on the integrity of the Electoral College. The attempted disenfranchisement of millions of voters. The theft of a legitimate national presidential election."

The board goes on to slam the Florida Republicans who are defending Trump.

"To put Trump above the law would tell history, and the world, that there is no price to be paid for attempting a coup against the oldest continuous democracy," the Sun Sentinel board warns. "The initial reaction from some other Republicans is appalling. Florida's junior senator, Rick Scott, claimed that the Justice Department indicted Trump to cover up the 'shady business dealings' of the president's son. Sen. Marco Rubio, ignored the lengthy indictment, opining that 'apparently it is now a crime' to tell blatant lies about a rigged election in an attempt to overthrow the government."

The board continues, "Rep. Matt Gaetz called the indictment a 'total disgrace to the United States of America,' which aptly describes Gaetz himself. Scott and Gaetz were among the 147 members of Congress who catered to Trump and to the mob that attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, by voting to reject at least one of Joe Biden's electoral slates. So did 11 other Florida Republican House members. They bore as much malice to the Constitution that day as Trump did."

DeSantis, the Sun Sentinel board laments, "continues to make a pathetic play for Trump's voters by defending him in a backhanded way" and attacking "the indictment for where it was returned: in Washington, (D.C.), a heavily Democratic city whose population is 45 percent Black and which votes Democratic."

"No defeated president had ever refused an orderly transfer of power or persisted in lying that the election had been stolen from him," the board notes. "Trump is running again for the leadership of the Free World with overwhelming odds, at the moment, of locking down the Republican nomination and a plausible chance of winning it all…. To ignore what Trump is charged with would be the end of American democracy."

The South Florida Sun Sentinel's full editorial is available at this link.

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