Michael Knowles says the federal government should pay Donald Trump's legal fees
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From the January 23, 2023, edition of The Daily Wire's The Michael Knowles Show
MICHAEL KNOWLES (HOST): Some Florida Republicans are suggesting that we cover -- that -- not we. I'm not a Florida resident -- that the Florida taxpayer cover President Trump's legal bills with taxpayer funds. This proposal was filed by Senator Ileana Garcia in Miami. It doesn't specifically name Trump, this bill. But the bill says that legal fees incurred as a result of criminal charges brought by a US public entity on qualified persons would -- who have been subject to political discrimination would be covered by -- by state funds. So, obviously, this is about Trump. Trump is covered here. DeSantis has come out and said, I'm gonna veto this if this makes it to my desk. We are not spending taxpayer money to cover Donald Trump's legal fees. I actually think they're both right in this instance. I side with the state senator on the general thrust of the legislation and I agree with Governor DeSantis that the Florida taxpayer should not be on the hook for this.
I think this should be paid for by the federal government. This should be paid for by the taxpayer because it's not gonna be -- not one red cent is gonna come out of a taxpayer here. OK? President Trump's legal fees - we've never seen anything like this in America. They are throwing everything they can to destroy this man. His legal fees amount to, according to him, about a hundred million dollars right now. In 2022, according to the Government Accountability Office, the US government wasted $247 billion just in improper payments. I'm not saying they wasted it on some stupid study, you know, like lesbian obesity in seahorses or something. I mean, just in payments the government should not have made that they did make for no reason whatsoever, they spent $247 billion. Trump's legal fees are a hundred million dollars. So, you divide that number in half, then you go an order of magnitude lower and you'd still have a lot of change left over. But this should be paid for by the government. It won't -- it wouldn't be paid for by the taxpayer, but it would be paid for by the government. You cut -- truly, you could cut just even a tiny sliver of a sliver of iota of waste, it should cover this in two seconds. It should be covered by the government because otherwise, you're creating an incentive for the ruling party to persecute the leader of the opposition, to prosecute, specifically, but then at a broader level to persecute, to try to destroy, to bury in legal fees the leader of the opposition. And that's bad for both parties and that's bad for the citizens.