Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed back on former President Donald Trump’s claims about the true winner of the 2020 presidential election in his latest television appearance Monday.
“Whoever puts their hand on the Bible on Jan. 20 every four years is the winner,” DeSantis told NBC News host Dasha Burns.
When pressed to answer whether Trump lost, he said: “No, of course, he lost. Joe Biden is the president.”
DeSantis, coming in second behind Trump in polls for the Republican primary, has ramped up his criticism of the former president in recent weeks.
DeSantis pushes back on Trump’s COVID-19 policies
DeSantis took aim at Trump for many of his pandemic-related decisions, like embracing lockdowns and signing the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, a stimulus bill that DeSantis said funded mail-in ballots in the interview Monday.
“Why did we have all those mail votes? Because Trump turned the government over to Fauci,” DeSantis said of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former chief of the White House task force on COVID-19.
He used his governing track record in Florida as an example: While Americans in DeSantis’ state voted by mail in the 2020 election, Republican lawmakers in Florida passed reforms and tightened restrictions on mail-in ballots earlier this year.
During the interview, DeSantis said that Republicans should focus on the failures of the Biden administration’s policies instead of Trump’s legal troubles.
“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,” he said.
A spokesperson for Trump said in a statement that the Florida governor “should really stop being Joe Biden’s biggest cheerleader,” per The New York Times.
Apart from denying Trump’s claims, DeSantis also vocalized other concerns that he observed in the 2020 election, like the involvement of social media giants.
Twitter, now known as X, suppressed the news about Hunter Biden’s laptop, while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg funded grants for election administration during this election.
DNC responds to DeSantis
The Democratic National Committee issued a statement in response to DeSantis’ remarks Monday.
“As Ron DeSantis attempts to reboot his disaster of a campaign, he’s now trying to spin his yearslong record of supporting election conspiracy theories and January 6 insurrectionists … but has Ron DeSantis met Ron DeSantis?” the committee said.
“DeSantis has said he’d consider pardoning some January 6 insurrectionists,” the statement said, adding that he “has a long history of downplaying the violence from the January 6 insurrection — and it was as recent as this summer that DeSantis publicly refused to admit Trump lost the 2020 election.”
When the news of Trump’s latest indictment — related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election — was released last week, DeSantis issued a statement, accusing the Department of Justice of politicizing the law.
“As President, I will end the weaponization of government, replace the FBI Director, and ensure a single standard of justice for all Americans,” he said.
But when he was in Iowa hosting a campaign event on Friday, a day after Trump was arraigned, he said that the controversial claims about the election were not true.
“I’ve said many times: The election is what it is,” DeSantis said, per The Washington Post. “All those theories that were put out did not prove to be true.”
But, in the past, he has hinted at pardoning Trump if he became president.