DeSantis ducks opportunity to attack Trump’s massive campaign spending on legal fees

DeSantis’s words come despite his rapid response director saying Trump’s campaign ‘scammed’ grandmas

Florida Gov Ron DeSantis dodged the opportunity to attack former president Donald Trump’s campaign spending massive amounts of money on legal fees on Monday.

During the weekend, The Washington Post reported that the former president’s political action committee spent more than $40m on legal costs for himself and others.

In response, Christina Pushaw criticised Mr Trump on X, former known as Twitter.

“In other words, MAGA grandmas were scammed - based on false promises from Trump campaign officials who admitted under oath, on video, that they knew the election couldn’t be overturned - out of their social security checks, in order to pay a billionaire’s legal bills?” Ms Pushaw said.

But when asked about the remarks while laying out his economic agenda in Rochester, New Hampshire, Mr DeSantis passed on attacking Mr Trump.

“I’m not familiar with that, but at the end of the day, we’re here to talk about restoring this economy,” he said. “We’re here to talk about uplifting the middle class. To me, if you ask voters are they more interested in hearing about that or the process stories about the politics, I think that they want to hear about the country’s future, and so that’s what we’re going to do.”

Mr DeSantis has attempted to reboot his campaign after his campaign failed to meet fundraising expectations, raising only $20m in his first fundraising quarter as a presidential candidate. Similarly, his campaign has significantly downsized as he has let go numerous members of his campaign staff as he seeks a reboot.

A New York Times/Siena College poll released Monday showed that 54 per cent of likely Republican primary voters support Mr Trump while only 17 per cent of the same group said that they would support Mr DeSantis. None of the other Republican candidates for president register in double digits.