DeSantis slams Trump: He’s 'fine' with abuse of power 'if it’s against the people he doesn’t like'
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis fired a rare shot across the bow at former President Donald Trump in a recent interview ahead of the January 15 Iowa Caucuses.
While speaking to RealClearPolitics, DeSantis commented on last week's Anderson v. Griswold ruling from the Colorado supreme court that disqualified the former president from appearing on the Centennial State's 2024 Republican primary ballot, saying he opposed the ruling "as a matter of principle." He opined that the Anderson decision "takes us down a road that’s not going to be good for this country when a court can disqualify you without a criminal conviction." However, he also hinted that his top 2024 rival's claims of being a victim of a weaponized justice system were hypocritical.
"Lets just be clear: Trump is fine with weaponization if it’s against people he doesn’t like," DeSantis said, citing the example of ardent Trump supporters unsuccessfully filing what he called a "bogus" complaint with the Florida Ethics Commission.
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DeSantis also scoffed at fellow GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy's call for other Republican presidential hopefuls to withdraw from the Colorado ballot in solidarity with Trump.
"If one of Trump’s competitors was removed by a state supreme court, is there any chance in hell he would remove himself in solidarity?" DeSantis asked. "He'd spike the football!"
The Florida governor's claims about "weaponization" are hard to dispute, given Trump's repeated promises on the campaign stump to deploy the Department of Justice against his political opponents — including President Joe Biden and his family. Notably, this argument seems to contradict his repeated assertions in court that as a former president, he has absolute immunity from accountability in both civil and criminal court. Under that logic, Trump's vision of absolute presidential immunity would start and end with him.
"f they do this and they've already done it, but if they want to follow through on this, yeah, it could certainly happen in reverse," Trump said in a November interview with Univision. "What they've done is they've released the genie out of the box."
READ MORE: Jack Smith just tore apart Trump's 'startling' absolute immunity argument
