As indictments threaten to continue to pile up for former President Donald Trump, some of his rivals for the Republican nomination are raising concerns.
On Sunday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Trump’s federal indictment was proof he hadn’t “drained the swamp like he promised” as president, or he probably “wouldn’t be in the mess that he’s in right now.”
Former Rep. Will Hurd of Texas said Trump was running for president to “stay out of prison.”
Hurd was booed by the crowd at the Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines Friday after making the remarks, which he said he expected. What surprised him, he said, was the applause.
“I knew there were going to be people that didn’t like it, but what I didn’t expect was there were a lot of people that actually clapped,” Hurd said Sunday on “Meet the Press.” “There were more people that just sat there politely and probably understand and knew what I was saying was the truth.”
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who served as Trump’s U.N. ambassador, told “Face the Nation” Sunday that if the accusations against Trump were true, “it’s incredibly dangerous to our national security.”
When asked about new obstruction counts related to allegedly deleted Mar-a-Lago security camera footage, Haley said, “none of that sounds good.”
“It doesn’t matter if you’re Republican or Democrat,” she said. “You shouldn’t be erasing anything unless you have something to hide. But everybody needs to be treated the same way.”
While candidates including Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have said they’re open to pardoning Trump, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said there shouldn’t be any discussion about a pardon during the campaign.
“That should not be any discussion during a presidential campaign. You don’t put pardons out there to garner votes,” Hutchinson said on “Face the Nation.” “Anybody who promises pardons during a presidential campaign is not serving our system of justice well, and it’s inappropriate.”
Trump responded to some of his Republican opponents on his site Truth Social. In one post, Trump said Hurd was wrong to say he was running for president to stay out of prison.
“Wrong, if I wasn’t running, or running and doing badly (like him & (former New Jersey Gov. Chris) Christie!), with no chance to win, these prosecutions would never have been brought or happened!” Trump wrote.
In another post, Trump said Hutchinson was “playing right into Marxists hands.”
Trump has been indicted in a federal classified documents case and a New York hush money case, and he could also be indicted in a Georgia case connected to efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Costs are mounting for Trump’s legal defense, and his political action committee Save America spent more than $40 million on legal fees in the first six months of 2023, according to The Washington Post.
Trump remains the Republican Party’s frontrunner in national polls, but the percentage of Republican and Republican-leaning independents who believe Trump did “nothing wrong” has fallen from 50% in June to 41% in an NPR/PBS “Newshour”/Marist poll released Friday.
“Donald Trump has proven repeatedly over the past seven years that he can hold his Republican support in the face of numerous troubles,” Marist College Institute for Public Opinion Director Lee M. Miringoff said in a statement. “With these additional charges, Trump’s troubles may be catching up with him, though history does suggest otherwise.”