DeSantis says Trump indictments ‘sucked out’ oxygen from GOP primary

Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he believes the indictments against former President Trump “sucked out” the oxygen from and diluted the Republican presidential primary race.

Trump has been indicted four times, first by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) and a New York grand jury in March 2023 on charges related to hush money payments. DeSantis said Bragg would not have brought forth the case “if it was anyone other than Donald Trump” during a recently aired interview.

In an interview with Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) News’s David Brody that aired on “The 700 Club,” DeSantis said there are “always things that happen,” but if he were to change one thing about the primary race, he wished the former president “hadn’t been indicted on any of this stuff.”

He said that he has criticized all the cases against the former president, though the two have publicly gone head to head when it comes to issues in their respective presidential campaigns.

Bragg, DeSantis said, is distorting justice with the indictment, but he also said it distorted the primary. DeSantis said the indictments helped Trump during the primary race and “just crowded out, I think, so much other stuff, and it’s sucked out a lot of oxygen.”

The Florida Governor has struggled to hold on to second place in the presidential primary, with former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley on the rise. His campaign has experienced internal turmoil with his super PAC, Never Back Down, experiencing resignations and terminations in recent weeks.

Trump has held a comfortable lead in the polls ahead of DeSantis, Haley and other candidates vying for the White House. He has skipped out on all the previous GOP debates, while the remaining candidates battled on stage, hoping to chip away at his lead.

In the interview with Brody, DeSantis argued that Trump’s indictments, and the buzz following the former President and his charges, have taken away from the primary and the other candidates.

“I think, for the primary, it distorted it. Yeah, it distorted it,” DeSantis said. “You know, in a general election, I think the Democrats have a plan on this. I think the media has a plan on this.”

DeSantis continued, saying that “if it gets to the point” several months from now where Trump is the Republican Party’s nominee, the Democrats and the media “have a plan for how … they’re going to ride this out.”

The governor also recently railed against the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to disqualify Trump from the state’s ballot by calling it a “stunt” by Democrats and the media to solidify the former president’s support in the primary.