Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis reacted to the Tuesday announcement of a third indictment against former President Donald Trump by criticizing Washington, D.C., instead of Trump, his chief rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
“I have not read the indictment. I do, though, believe we need to enact reforms so that Americans have the right to remove cases from Washington, D.C., to their home districts,” DeSantis said in a statement. “Washington, D.C., is a ‘swamp’ and it is unfair to have to stand trial before a jury that is reflective of the swamp mentality.”
His argument reflects the reality that the GOP is still largely echoing Trump, who has for years used the term “swamp” to refer to the nation’s capital, even as he faces an unprecedented number of legal charges and accusations, including most recently conspiracy to defraud the United States. And it advances a surreal view of the law: DeSantis is saying the nearly 700,000 people who live in Washington do not deserve the right to judge alleged crimes committed in their jurisdiction, unlike Americans everywhere else in the country.
Other Republicans have made similar points to bolster Trump against legal scrutiny.
In June, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters that if special counsel Jack Smith issued charges relating to Trump’s actions in Washington in the waning days of his presidency, “that would represent a major outrage by Republicans.”
“You could convict any Republican of anything in Washington, D.C.,” said Graham, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Conservatives, including those who are pitching themselves as alternatives to Trump as the Republican primary season nears, rallied to challenge the indictment throughout Tuesday evening.
“I commit to pardoning Trump for this indictment. Donald Trump isn’t the cause of what happened on Jan 6,” businessman Vivek Ramaswamy declared in a video posted on Twitter.
In a poll conducted by Siena College and The New York Times and released on Monday, Republican primary voters reported that they overwhelmingly favor Trump to be their party’s presidential nominee for a third election cycle in a row, despite his alleged criminal activity and his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden.
Trump led DeSantis by nearly 40 percentage points in that poll.