
During an appearance on Megyn Kelly‘s podcast, 2024 Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis said that if he’s elected president, he’ll likely pardon Donald Trump is he’s convicted of any crimes.
“I look at it like, you know, Ford pardoned Nixon. He took some heat for it,” DeSantis toldKelly. “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.”
DeSantis pointed to Trump’s age as a reason to pardon him.
“I don’t think it would be good for the country to have an almost 80-year-old former President go to prison,” he said. “That doesn’t seem like it would be a good thing.”
As Florida Politics points out, DeSantis has previously mentioned presidential pardons before, specifically for Jan. 6 rioters.
“A lot of people wait until the end of the administration to issue pardons,” he previously said on the on the Clay and Buck radio show. “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.”
Image via Shutterstock.com