FLASHBACK: DeSantis Repeatedly Fawned Over Trump’s SCOTUS Picks Before Latest Attack
While former President Donald Trump deals with his 37 criminal counts stemming from his alleged mishandling of classified documents, the 2024 presidential race goes on, and so do the campaigns of his political opponents.
Despite Trump’s clear polling advantage over his fellow Republicans, most of his primary rivals — including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — responded to the indictment by slamming the justice system. As it were, DeSantis took the unusual step of criticizing Trump on Monday by claiming his Supreme Court appointments would be better than any of those from the former president.
Here’s what DeSantis said in his interview with Hugh Hewitt:
I would say we’ll do better than that. I mean, I respect the three appointees he did, but none of those three are at the same level of Justices Thomas and Justice Alito. I think they are the gold standard, and so my justices will be along the lines of a Sam Alito and a Clarence Thomas. And in Florida, I inherited a very liberal state supreme court, maybe the most liberal in the country, very activist. But I was able to replace three of the four liberals my first month in office with conservative justices. I’ve since been able to make a number of appointments since then. So we now have the most conservative state supreme court in the country.
DeSantis taking aim at Trump’s appointments is particularly notable given the years DeSantis spent showering Trump with praise for his picks for the Supreme Court — that is, before he launched his campaign against Trump.
Trump’s campaign recalled that when DeSantis was running for governor years ago, he declared, “Donald Trump has done a better job of appointing judges to both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Appeals Court than any other president in my lifetime, including one of my heroes: Ronald Reagan.”
What did DeSantis think about Trump’s appointments individually? Well, here’s DeSantis glowingly comparing Neil Gorsuch to Antonin Scalia.
Here’s a Fox Business interview where DeSantis praised Brett Kavanuagh’s “top-flight intellect” and “impeccable pedigree.”
And this is what DeSantis had to say about Amy Coney Barrett:
How times have changed.
Watch above.
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