Ron DeSantis is citing a historical precedent in saying, if elected President, he'd likely pardon Donald Trump for any convictions Trump may suffer in ongoing federal criminal cases.
The Governor pointed to President Gerald Ford offering Richard Nixon clemency after Nixon resigned his office in the wake of the Watergate scandal and the subsequent cover-up.
"I look at it like, you know, Ford pardoned Nixon. He took some heat for it," DeSantis told interviewer Megyn Kelly. "But at the end of the day it's like, do we want to move forward as a country or do we want to be mired in these past controversies? And I think the public wants a fresh start."
There are material differences between the Trump-DeSantis dynamic and that of Nixon and Ford a half century ago.
For starters, Ford was Nixon's appointed Vice President, picked after Spiro Agnew resigned in 1973 in the wake of his own scandals. Meanwhile, DeSantis has ruled out being Trump's running mate in the event the Governor does not win the Republican presidential nomination.
As he has done before, DeSantis invoked Trump's advanced age as another reason the former President shouldn't be locked up.
"I don't think it would be good for the country to have an almost 80-year-old former President go to prison," DeSantis told Kelly. "That doesn't seem like it would be a good thing."
DeSantis had previously floated "Day 1" pardons of the former President and the Jan. 6 rioters Trump encouraged if he wins the White House.
"A lot of people wait until the end of the administration to issue pardons. We're going to find examples where government has been weaponized against disfavored groups and we will apply relief as appropriate, but it will be done on a case-by-case basis because I think you've got to make sure that there's a whole bunch of cases that don't necessarily get headlines," DeSantis said on the "Clay and Buck" radio show this spring.
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