Ron DeSantis Really Wants to Remind You That Trump Allegedly Paid Off a Porn Star

The Florida governor finally weighs in on Trump’s potential indictment.

Phil Sears/AP

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Amid pressure to denounce a New York prosecutor who might soon indict Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis has finally decided to weigh in on the hush-money case swirling around the former president. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, DeSantis insisted, is a politically motivated “Soros-funded prosecutor” seeking to weaponize his office against a political enemy. 

But almost immediately after ticking off that tired MAGA talking point, DeSantis—a potential Trump rival for the GOP presidential nomination— seemed to go out of his way to describe the lurid allegations at the center of the case. In doing so, the Florida governor appeared pretty eager to remind Americans that Trump allegedly slept with a porn actress. (Trump denies there was any sexual affair.)

“I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair, I just can’t speak to that,” DeSantis said, before weaving back into a swipe at the Manhattan DA that featured yet another gratuitous description of Trump’s alleged efforts to cover up his payments to Stormy Daniels.

“What I can speak to is if you have a prosecutor who is ignoring crimes happening every single day in his jurisdiction, and he chooses to go back many, many years ago to try to do something about pornstar hush-money payments, that’s an example of pursuing a political agenda and weaponizing the office, and I think that that’s fundamentally wrong.”

Despite getting the condemnation of Bragg that they’d reportedly been demanding, Trump allies did not seem happy with DeSantis’ statement. 

I guess repeating the words “porn star” and “hush money”—in the run-up to what could be our very first indictment of a former president—is as good a political strategy as any.

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And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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