DeSantis offers Trump a way out (of prison)

By BRUCE LOWITT

If he is elected president in 2024, Ron DeSantis said, he will grant Donald Trump “a full, free and absolute pardon” for any crimes committed by the former president before, during or after his term in office.

The announcement by the autocratic and anti-democratic Republican governor of Florida is seen by many as an attempt to persuade Trump to give up his run for reelection, or at least to try and steal voters from Trump, who has hinted he will seek to regain the office he held before being defeated in 2020 by Joe Biden.

DeSantis, in effect – but not formally – declaring his candidacy, said that while he still considers Trump “a misogynistic moron who has stolen millions of dollars from taxpayers to enrich himself and his family and has put our country in grave danger with his seditious and traitorous activities during and after his presidency, that doesn’t make him a bad person.”

He said he has learned a lot from Trump about campaigning and governing, such as condemning opponents and the media as enemies of the state while praising sycophants and religious zealots who claim the United States Constitution itself is a hoax.

“Also,” DeSantis added, “he just decides whatever he does is legal, whether it is or not, and sort of makes up the rules as he goes along and then changes the rules when they no longer suit him, and generally says whatever the hell he feels like saying, then denies he said it, or does whatever the hell he wants, then swears he never did it.

“I mean, sure, I do some of those things, like the way I handled COVID and smearing the LGBTQ crowd, and running Florida’s health and educational systems into the ground,” DeSantis said, “but I can’t pirouette the way Trump does. Reversing himself, that’s his genius.”

Trump has broadly hinted but hasn’t specifically announced that he will be seeking to return to the White House. Some of his former aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity, revealed that he also has begun formulating alternative plans in the event he is not nominated by the Republican Party or fails in his bid to be reelected.

He has bought property in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates, one former cabinet member said, pointing out than none of those countries has an extradition treaty with the United States.

Trump also is reportedly in negotiations with what another former aide said was “among the highest leaders in Russia” to finally build and move into a Moscow hotel that would bear his name “and to become one of those oligarchs he envies.”

DeSantis said he has several other ideas that might persuade Trump to abandon his reelection campaign.

“I’m thinking maybe a job in my administration – like ambassador to Russia or North Korea, or chairman of the Federal Reserve or secretary of the treasury,” he said. “Of course, those last two, we’d have to keep a close watch on him. Putting Trump near money is like Trump with a Bunny. He just can’t control himself.

“But the pardon, like the one (Gerald) Ford handed (Richard) Nixon, I think that’s the clincher once Trump realizes the next place he lives will probably be in the Big House, not the White House.”