The latest arraignment for former President Donald Trump hardly captured everyone’s focus as his primary rival revealed what kept him from seeing more than “a little bit.”
For many, concerns about the 2020 presidential election have yet to be dispelled and the federal indictment against Trump alleging conspiracy and obstruction related to Jan. 6 has ensured election integrity will remain a focus for 2024.
While campaigning in Iowa Friday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was asked whether he had tuned in for coverage of the arraignment and reminded the media that he is still serving the people of the Sunshine State, and that takes precedence over their treatment of the president as guilty until proven innocent.
“I saw a little bit. Unfortunately, one of the things as governor that you have to do is oversee executions,” DeSantis explained. “So we had an execution yesterday, so I was tied up with that for most of the day.”
The governor was referring to the execution by lethal injection of 61-year-old James Barnes who had been convicted in 2007 of murdering 41-year-old nurse Patricia Miller in 1988. Court records had detailed how Miller had been sexually assaulted before she was killed with a hammer and had her bed set on fire by Barnes.
His conviction had come while he was already serving a life sentence for strangling his wife, Linda Barnes, to death in 1997.
Though unable to watch coverage of the arraignment, DeSantis did weigh in on the 2020 election when asked if he believed it was stolen. “I’ve said many times, the election is what it is. All those theories that were put, it did not prove to be true.”
“But I’ve also said, the way you conduct a good election that people have confidence in — you don’t change the rules in the middle of the game, you don’t ballot harvest, you don’t do Zuckerbucks. And clearly having the agencies work with Facebook to censor things like Hunter Biden, that’s unfair,” he contended.
“So, it was not an election that was conducted the way I think that we want to, but that’s different than saying like Maduro stole votes or something like that,” the governor presented, making a comparison to the election of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. “And I think those theories, you know, proved to be unsubstantiated.”
DeSantis then pivoted to how his state has taken actions to confront issues of election integrity head-on and stated, “In Florida, we banned Zuckerbucks, we banned ballot harvesting, we have a transparent process where you know the votes are coming in,” and you have the results before the night is over.
As for his presidential campaign, the governor went on to assure that anywhere practices are allowed that Democrats have taken advantage of, his team will not handicap themselves. “As the candidate, I am not gonna fight with one hand tied behind my back. If there is ballot harvesting, we are gonna harvest if it’s allowed. I don’t think it should be, but in Nevada and these places, we’re gonna get after it.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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