Brandon Marshall
Audio By Carbonatix
Just one day after his second indictment was unsealed and three days before he was due in a Florida courtroom, former president Donald Trump managed to win the annual Western Conservative Summit presidential straw poll – beating out every Republican rival planning a run in 2024, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who’d defeated Trump in the same poll two years in a row.
“Indict this!” wrote a Twitter Trump supporter after the results were revealed on Sunday, June 11, by the Centennial Institute, a think tank of Lakewood-based Colorado Christian University, which holds the Western Conservative Summit every year in metro Denver.
Trump scored 40.3 percent of the votes in the non-partisan straw poll, while DeSantis recorded 35.8 percent and political commentator Larry Elder came in third with 7.7 percent, according to CCU researchers.
But not so fast: DeSantis did score a win in the “Approval Voting” poll, which allows participants to choose multiple candidates who are most fit to run for president.
Out of 21 people in that poll, DeSantis proved to be the most popular, with 66.9 percent of the approval votes. Trump received 63.4 percent, and Elder brought in 44.9 percent. Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. snagged 14.4 percent of the vote, while President Joe Biden wasn’t able to bring in more than 1 percent.
“Approval voting minimizes the dilemma of choosing between the candidate you really like and the candidate you think is most electable,” explains Approval Voting advocate Frank Atwood.
While Trump coming in ahead of DeSantis for the first time in three years – and just one day after his second indictment – was a surprising result, the fact that his biggest challenger was able to rake in the most Approval Voting ballots was a real eye-opener.
“It’s a two-horse race for the Republican nomination for president,” says Jeff Hunt, co-chair of the Western Conservative Summit. “The results are clear: Western grassroots conservatives want a fighter who will take on the radical left and the institutions that are destroying America’s founding principles.”
Speakers at the June 9-10 Summit talked a lot about the issues that Republicans see plaguing America, but the Trump indictment wound up taking center stage for many.
“It is a moment of danger,” said Missouri Senator Josh Hawley during his Summit speech. “Why? Because the left – even as we speak – the left is assaulting the very foundations of our American nation. They have decided that they no longer believe in the rule of law. Look at what happened just yesterday: former president of the United States indicted. The first time in American history that a sitting president has tried to indict and jail his opponent. All I can say about it is this: ‘If the people in power can put in jail their political opponents, we don’t have a republic anymore. That’s the danger we’re in.”
Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who also spoke at the two-day event, went after Democrats in her defense of The Donald. “Biden has classified documents, Hillary Clinton has classified documents, good old Mike Pence has classified documents,” Boebert said during her Friday night speech, according to the Washington Times. “But when they find President Trump has classified documents – who was a president – had the authority to declassify, they say, ‘Espionage Act! Indict him!'”
Boebert has been a staunch supporter of Trump on social media, with many of her recent tweets fixated on his indictment.
Yesterday, Hillary Clinton had the nerve to sell merchandise as she gloated about Trump being indicted.
The two-tiered justice system in our nation is completely out of control.
Hillary has committed more crimes than just about anyone and here she is selling hats and laughing.…
— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) June 10, 2023
“If there was an FD-1023 on President Trump that had even half the allegations that the one on Biden has, we’d be in the midst of impeachment proceedings,” Boebert tweeted on June 12. “There are two standards of justice in our country and that is not a secret.”
Attempts to reach Boebert for comment about the Trump indictment and the Western Conservative Summit – which the former president attended in 2016 – were unsuccessful.
In his latest indictment, Trump was charged with willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, scheming to conceal, and making false statements and representations in connection with his alleged handling of classified documents and information after leaving office. The former commander-in-chief is already facing more than thirty felony charges in a separate indictment that focuses on his Stormy Daniels payoff scandal.
“I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States, who received far more votes than any sitting President in the History of our Country, and is currently leading, by far, all Candidates, both Democrat and Republican, in Polls of the 2024 Presidential Election,” Trump blasted in a June 8 Truth Social post. “I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!”
