PANAMA CITY, Fla. – Former President Donald Trump attacked Gov. Ron DeSantis as inexperienced after the governor quashed rumors that he would help him fight extradition if indicted.
DeSantis faced criticism from Trump’s supporters on social media after he spoke on the subject for the first time on Monday at the Gulf Coast State College in Panama City during a news conference to call on the legislature to stand against the use of central bank digital currency.
Political reporters were less interested in his CBDC position and focused most of their questions on the possibility of a Manhattan indictment and about how DeSantis would respond as a Trump Republican rival with power over Mar-a-Lago.
“We are not involved in this, won’t be involved in this,” DeSantis said. “I have no interest in getting involved in some type of manufactured circus.”
Trump, who is campaigning for reelection in 2024, fired back on Truth Social.
The former president linked to The New York Times’s November 2022 report “Several students recalled that Mr. DeSantis was a frequent presence at parties with the seniors who lived in town” as “Exclusive: Ron DeSantis partied with underage girls at drinking party while teaching at a Georgia school.”
“DeSanctimonious will probably find out about FALSE ACCUSATIONS & FAKE STORIES sometime in the future, as he gets older, wiser, and better known, when he’s unfairly and illegally attacked by a woman, even classmates that are ‘underage’ (or possibly a man!),” Trump wrote. “I’m sure he will want to fight these misfits just like I do!”
DeSantis questioned the legitimacy of an indictment out of Manhattan.
“I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair,” DeSantis said. “I can’t speak to that, but what I can speak to, is that if you have a prosecutor who is ignoring crimes happening every single day in his jurisdiction and he chooses to go back many, many years ago to try to use something about porn star hush money payments, that’s an example of pursuing a political agenda and weaponizing the office.”
Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney, was investigating payments made to former porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election. DeSantis accused Bragg of dereliction of duty.
“He has downgraded over 50% of the felonies to misdemeanors. He says he doesn’t want to even have jail time for the vast, vast majority of crimes, and what we have seen in Manhattan is we’ve seen the crime rate go up and we’ve seen citizens become less safe,” DeSantis said.
As the motive, DeSantis cited reports that Bragg had received more than $1 million from a political action committee that received funding from George Soros, a billionaire Democratic donor.
If Bragg indicts Trump, he would make history with the first criminal case against a former U.S. president.
Watch the 12 p.m. report on the case