Trump makes some strange insinuations about Ron DeSantis – Shortly after the Florida governor and possible presidential candidate spoke about his potential indictment, the former president implied that DeSantis could one day face accusations of his own.
Donald Trump Dramashow: Part 990002323
Throughout the day on Monday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis faced demands that he say something about the reports that he may soon be indicted by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. Later in the morning, he finally spoke out in response to a reporter who asked about it.
After going on for more than a minute about the “Soros-funded” Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg, DeSantis referenced the alleged “porn star hush money payments” on more than one occasion.
“Look- I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair, I can’t speak to that,” DeSantis said during his remarks. He then accused Bragg of “going 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.”
He added that, as governor of Florida, his office would not be involved in any way with any Trump arrest. And throughout, he did not say Trump’s name at any point, which was keeping with DeSantis’ policy in recent months to not engage directly with the former president.
The statement, which ripped Bragg while not specifically declaring Trump innocent or pledging to do anything to stop the arrest from happening, was treated as inadequate in Trump world, which clearly believed that DeSantis had an obligation to defend the man who has not only been bashing him for months but who he likely will soon be running against for president.
Trump Responds
“Are you kidding me? SAY HIS NAME!,” Trump spokesperson Liz Harrington said on Twitter of DeSantis’ statement. “What a total fraud he is. He takes a dig at President Trump who is being falsely accused and can’t even say his name. It proves DeSantis is totally fine with a third world nation arresting their number one political opposition. Not MAGA!”
Then Trump weighed in on Truth Social, in which he made some insinuations about his possible future opponent.
“Ron 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!). I’m sure he will want to fight these misfits just like I do!,” Trump said on his social network.
Trump’s post included a screenshot of a blog post shared by the anti-Trump “resistance” Twitter account Meidas Touch, which typically does not find itself on the same side as Trump. It included photos of DeSantis partying with a group of young women, when he worked at a prep school in the early 2000s.
DeSantis has not at any point been accused of sexual misconduct in anyway. But Trump, in a single sentence, had managed to imply that DeSantis may one day be accused both of heterosexual pederasty, and something even more.
Bragg Under Attack
In a subsequent post on Truth Social, Trump posted a video taking aim at Alvin Bragg, the district attorney behind the possible indictment. It called Bragg “the worst DA in the country” and accused him of crimes against the people of New York, before making another insinuation: Of “disturbing allegations leveled against Bragg by an unnamed woman.”
That was a reference to a Daily Mail story in February of 2022 when Bragg first came into office. Color of Change, an activist group that gets some funding from George Soros, had cut its funding to Bragg in half by $500,000 in the 2021 election campaign after a “disturbing allegation was made against him by [an] unnamed woman.”
The Mail reported that “the woman shared her allegation via text message” to Color of Change, the organization responded, and received no reply, and therefore had no way to evaluate the merits of the complaint.
Nothing further came of the allegation, and it’s not even clear what the accusation was. Bragg denied it to the newspaper, stating that “the suggestion that I did something disturbing is patently false.”
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Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
