Ron DeSantis took a rare dig at Donald Trump’s age this week while discussing a possible pardon for the embattled 77-year-old ex-president, RadarOnline.com has learned.
The Florida governor’s surprising remarks came on Friday during an interview with Megyn Kelly on her SiriusXM program The Megyn Kelly Show.
The pair discussed the two indictments already filed against former President Trump, as well as a possible third indictment Special Counsel Jack Smith is allegedly preparing to file in connection to Trump’s purported efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
“Given your views on the weaponization of government, would you commit to pardoning him on any federal charges against him?” Kelly asked DeSantis on Friday.
“What I’ve said is very simple. I’m gonna do what’s right for the country,” DeSantis, 44, responded. “I don’t think it would be good for the country to have an almost 80-year-old former president go to prison.”
“It just doesn’t seem like it would be a good thing,” the Florida governor continued. “And I look at like, you know, [Gerald] Ford pardoned [Richard] Nixon, took some heat for it, but at the end of the day, it’s like, do we wanna 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. I think they want somebody that’s gonna focus on their issues,” DeSantis added. “We’ve had a lot that’s happened over the last five or six years, you know, I get that. But going forward, we’ve got all these issues that we’ve gotta deal with.”
As RadarOnline.com previously reported, DeSantis rarely speaks out against Trump despite the fact the former president regularly attacks the Florida governor-turned-presidential hopeful.
Meanwhile, DeSantis has urged Trump to take the debate stage so the two can discuss the “differences” between them as Republican candidates.
“We’ve been very frank at our differences with respect to the former president,” DeSantis said earlier this month. “I mean, for example, he promised to drain the swamp. It got worse. He did not drain the swamp.”
“He promised to have Mexico pay for a border wall. They did like 50 miles of wall,” he continued. “He said he was going to eliminate the national debt. They added almost $8 trillion to the debt in four years.”
“But I have no interest in attacking Donald Trump or any of these other candidates,” the Florida governor concluded. “Personally, I think we’ve got to rise above that and focus on the issues for once.”
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