Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis said definitively that rival Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, an acknowledgement the Florida governor made after years of equivocating answers.
“Of course he lost,” DeSantis said an interview with NBC News posted Monday. “Joe Biden's the president.”
DeSantis has often sidestepped questions about whether he believes the 2020 election results were legitimate. But in recent days he has started publicly questioning the lies that Trump and his allies have made about the election's legitimacy.
Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general said there was no credible evidence the election’s outcome was affected by fraud. The former president’s allegations were also roundly rejected by courts at the time, including judges he appointed.
Last week, Trump was charged by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith with four felonies related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the violent riot by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
DeSantis' shift in rhetoric has come as he seeks to reset his stagnant 2024 White House campaign. Trump, who remains widely popular with the Republican Party base, is the early and commanding front-runner in next year's GOP presidential primary.
DeSantis in his interview at first didn't offer a clear answer when asked if Trump lost, saying, “Whoever puts their hand on the Bible on Jan. 20 every four years is the winner." But he gave a more direct answer when pressed again.
The governor repeated his concerns about voting methods from the 2020 election, criticizing mail voting and so-called “ballot harvesting," but like other Republicans he said he would embrace the methods he had criticized.
“We are going to do it, too. We're not going to fight with one hand tied behind our backs," DeSantis said.
Academic research has shown that mail voting increases turnout but doesn’t benefit either party. Campaigns have normally pushed for it, allowing them to lock in votes early and focus their efforts on Election Day to encourage straggling supporters to get to the polls.
“The issue is, I think, what people in the media and elsewhere, they want to act like somehow this was just like the perfect election. I don't think it was a good-run election, but I also think Republicans didn't fight back. You've got to fight back when that is happening,” he said.
DeSantis has cast himself on the campaign trail as someone who could more successfully implement Trump's politics and has walked a wobbly line criticizing his actions.
Last month, he said Trump should have offered a stronger condemnation of the Jan. 6 attack. But he also said it was not an insurrection but a “protest” that “ended up devolving, you know, in a way that was unfortunate."
DeSantis has argued Republicans will lose in 2024 if they're focusing on the past election and the former president's legal problems, which also includes federal charges of mishandling classified documents, including those stored at Mar-a-Lago in a ballroom and bathroom, among other spaces.
“If the election is a referendum on Joe Biden's policies and the failures that we've seen and we are presenting a positive vision for the future, we will win the presidency,” DeSantis told NBC. “If, on the other hand, the election is not about Jan. 20, 2025, but Jan. 6, 2021, or what document was left by the toilet at Mar-a-Lago, if it's a referendum on that, we are going to lose.”
© Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
51 Comments
Superlib
That should have ended it. But you have these crazy people.
Empty, meaningless statement. It literally says nothing.
EFD
Even Rock-Star Ron-Ron recognizes it was all a lie.
Of course he knew that all along. Now he is in a flailing last gasp effort to save his "Fred Thompson/Jeb Bush" campaign from the trash bin of history, so he really has nothing else left to try or lose.
Blacklabel
Yep his “mega donor” told him to say that or the campaign money is getting turned off.
餓死鬼
Such eloquence.
djdenki
I don't think anyone should be surprised.
Regardless of Party, this is literally one of the most common political/campaigning strategies. Stay 100% loyal to your voting base during the offseason and then slowly test how far you can appeal to moderates before your base starts to get angry. Openly stating "Trump lost the 2020 election and Joe Biden is President" is one of the lowest effort things you can do to at least get some moderates to see you as a "reasonable" Republican as the election season gets closer.
falseflagsteve
All evildoers who I wouldn’t trust to make a decent cup of tea even.
wallace
"Hotel entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, the biggest individual donor to a group supporting Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid, has said he will not donate more money unless the Florida governor attracts new major donors and adopts a more moderate approach."
"DeSantis’ campaign finances have come under scrutiny in recent weeks after his campaign said it had let go 38 employees, or over one-third of staff."
"Still, DeSantis’ campaign and Never Back Down had a combined $109m in the bank at the end of June, well above the combined $53m of Trump’s campaign and his allied Super Pac, known as Maga Inc, according to financial disclosures to the Federal Elections Commission."
EFD
Bunk. It wasn't that honest a reason. In addition to getting cut off for being too extreme, Rock-Star Ronnie, the Warrant of political rock stars, is crashing and burning. So in a desperate last attempt to "reset" his abomination of a campaign, he decides to tell the truth for a change.
Of course nothing will solve his basic problem - that he is Ron DeSantis.
But it's a start.
Madverts
At some point the spineless GOP will turn on the outrageous victim they call D J Trump.
If only so they can hijack his bandwagon.
More humiliation for the insane party faithful. It's a bottomless barrel for these people.
Blacklabel
Not “bunk”
your boy Wallace just told you all about it.
Blacklabel
Nobody tells the truth for money.
but they will lie for it.
cuddly
Often seen in sports where a team or individual cheats and the other team or individual "loses".
wallace
Blacklabel
still an election denier.
Blacklabel
that would be correct.
”Almost a third of Americans still believe the 2020 election result was fraudulent”
EFD
Fact check true.
Your claim that he is now lying to keep his donor happy: Bunk.
He is now telling the truth because he has no other play. Too little too late, but at least Rock-Star Ron-Ron has learned the difference between an obvious lie and objective reality.
If only Stupid Voldemort's cultist rubes could be so incentivized.
Jimizo
What a loon.
He’ll be telling people Ted Cruz’s father wasn’t in on the JFK assassination next.
Totally lost the plot.
cuddly
Imagine that--doubting an election.
Hillary Clinton Maintains 2016 Election ‘Was Not On the Level’: ‘We Still Don’t Know What Really Happened’
https://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-maintains-2016-election-160716779.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall
plasticmonkey
I’ll trust the wisdom of my Lord ‘n’ Little Savior Donald J. Trump over the so-called expertise of woke Marxist academics any day of the week! Because otherwise the last eight years of my life will have been for nought!
Randy Johnson
De santis has long been compromised. Of course he would say this even when he knows it isn't true. Sad to see a man sell his soul.
Funny how election deniers call other election deniers. Lets look back at 2016.
Blacklabel
So by coming out with this new story that no one believes that he believes, who is DeSantis pandering to?
anyone who believes this new lie already voting for him, that’s his 12% base.
Democrats can’t vote for him and even if they could they won’t, they will just use this flip flop to mock him and attack Trump.
stupid move, likely on advice of his wife who wants a few more months of interviews and private jets. All he had to do was shut up, back Trump and 2028 was his.
Cards fan
Regardless, Trump still lost.
Right, because the rightwing media makes stuff up and their adoring fans lap it all up. Still doesn't make it true.
Jimizo
He’ll be denying Jewish space lasers start forest fires next.
The poor man needs help.
Gone right down the rabbit hole.
bass4funk
Well, to be fair it didn’t end it for the Dems in 2016 it should have though…
https://youtu.be/umsAhEFHFKA
How so?
Blacklabel
Fact check= true.
no money no campaign. Obviously. His mega donor ordered him to be more “moderate”.
Nothing more moderate than suddenly changing your statements on an election 2.5 years ago.
Timing was just “coincidental” to you?
wallace
MAGA supporters election deniers.
plasticmonkey
You’re in the minority. You lose.
Why don’t you get with a majority belief like that Jesus was born of a virgin. Over two thirds of Americans believe that one.
bass4funk
Doesn't mean you have the constitutional right to silence any opposition to the results.
Jimizo
So many modern day Galileos.
The future looks bright. Why Goldman Sachs and NASA aren’t banging their doors down is the mystery.
Blacklabel
How does saying Trump lost convince trump voters to change to Desantis?
or is he trying to take half of Pence’s 5% and half of Christie’s 2% to get back up to 15%+?
seeing as trump is going to prison (yeah right) wouldn’t it be better to support Trump strongly and take all his voters when he can’t run?
I’m up to hear some mental gymnastics
wallace
In 2016, there was a peaceful handover of power. No court cases files. Obama invited Trump to the Oval Office.
Ah_so
So now we know what it takes for a MAGA politician to tell the obvious truth.
But culturally it is a huge shift for a movement principally based on falsehoods.
bass4funk
While the Dems secretly used the Feds, impeachment, Russia collusion delusion, a salacious unverified dossier, but yeah, peaceful….
He had to! Lol
Blacklabel
Yes Trump “lost”.
just as the LA Dodgers “lost” the 2017 World Series but yet it was found 2 years later that the Astros were stealing signs.
did they go back and award the title to the rightful winner? Was anyone really punished?
nope, too controversial and too late.
So did the Dodgers “lose”? Yes they did. But there is additional context where many consider they “lost” but didn’t really lose, because they were cheated.
same story with 2020 election.
Blacklabel
Don’t make me post that long video of nearly all your favorite Democrats denying election results.
you know the one.
Cards fan
Now, that's is a fair point: It probably doesn't, and relitigating the results of the 2020 election is a fool's errand. Trump lost. Get over it.
bass4funk
Well, the Dems didn’t accept the results of the 2016 election, the GOP doesn’t have to either regardless if Biden is in the WH. No man gets to dictate how a person should vote, think or whom to accept.
lincolnman
And with that, RINO Ron goes from "rockstar" to "rat"....
In the MAGA-cult, belief in the Big Lie is sacrosanct...not because it's true, but because it is the fundamental basis for the continuing grift....
Trump knows this - it's why he has $80 million to pay his gaggle of bungling lawyers...it all came from the suckers that thought they were donating to his campaign...the small change left over goes to Melania's fashion coordinator...
He's not running for President, he's running to hustle and scam the MAGA-masses of every penny they own in a failed attempt to keep out of a cell...
Proving once again that in MAGA-world, there's one born every minute...
plasticmonkey
You’re here, right? No one is silencing you. Obviously.
No one has the constitutional right to overturn election results based on lies, disinformation, misinformation, or hearsay.
Trump lost. If you can’t handle that emotionally, tough.
Cards fan
Nonsense. They didn't try and overthrow the election results.
Bob Fosse
2 wrongs make a right so they?
How many court cases did Hillary file? Did the cyber ninjas look for any bamboo residue in 2016 too?
I must have missed it.
bass4funk
America is bigger than JT
Exactly, but it seems the Dems either didn’t get the memo or just didn’t care.
The Dems couldn’t in 2016
Bob Fosse
Since you’re so keen to talk about seven years ago why didn’t 45 continue to dispute the 2016 election results?
He was whining for months before, again without evidence or merit, that the election was rigged. But suddenly decided it was ‘perfect’ after he won.
Surely he’d have wanted to be sure. You know, count all the votes, check for mail voter fraud, all that stuff.
bass4funk
it was nonsense.
Democrats tried to muscle the Electoral College long after Nov. 8, 2016. Nearly five million Hillary fans endorsed a Change.org petition addressed to Trump’s pledged backers in the Electoral College.
The petition stated: “We are calling on the Electors to ignore their states’ votes and cast their ballots for Secretary Clinton.” As the video shows, this petition received 4,881,661 supporters and carried the headline, “Electoral College: Make Hillary Clinton President.”
Subtle maybe….
Cards fan
Right, because an online petition is the same as j6 lol
Kurumazaka2.1
by all means, do.
45 isn’t indicted for “denying election results.”
Blacklabel
No they just spent all 4 years secretly undermining the duly elected president by weaponizing all 3 branches of government and social/liberal media against him using spies and lies.
lincolnman
RINO Ron just appears to be agreeing with what the rest of Trump's team has already said...HE LOST....
His own handpicked AG Bill Barr: "Disputing President Donald Trump’s persistent, baseless claims, Attorney General William Barr declared Tuesday the U.S. Justice Department has uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome of the 2020 election."
His own handpicked attorney Rudy Giuliani: "Defendant Giuliani, for the purposes of litigation only, does not contest that, to the extent the statements were statements of fact and other wise actionable, such actionable factual statements were false,”
His favorite Fox News talking head: "I did not believe it for one second," Hannity testified, in the Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems trial when asked about Trump's fraudulent elections claims...
Even Trump himself: Trump admitted he lost to Biden: *Alyssa Farah Griffin, the former White House director of strategic communications, said on CNN's "State of the Union" that Trump "watching Joe Biden on TV said, 'Can you believe I lost to this guy?'
Don't know why the MAGA-faithful here are so mad at Ron - he's just agreeing with your MAGA-heroes...
bass4funk
Denial is denial
stormcrow
Has a candidate who’s out on bail in three different states ever won the presidency?
Cards fan
lol Complete and total nonsense. Prove it.
bass4funk
History:
Russian collusion delusion, two failed impeachment, trying to use the 25th amendment, blocking every agenda the man put forward, lying to the FISA court, in order to drum up a false insulations dossier, I mean it doesn’t matter now, because the Democrats still couldn’t get what they wanted, they still couldn’t get Trump, they still can’t block him from running, they still can’t lock this guy up.
So it’s all good.