TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis appeared to make his most decisive statements that former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election and that his claims of election fraud were false, but at the same time, he criticized the way the election was run and cited a list of alleged problems with it.
"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," DeSantis said on Sunday during an interview with NBC News. "But I also think Republicans didn’t fight back. You’ve got to fight back when that is happening."
This stands in contrast to DeSantis' own remarks in 2020 when he praised Florida's handling of the election votes as "timely and transparent" in a way that inspired confidence.
"Perhaps 2020 was the year that we finally vanquished the ghost of Bush versus Gore,” DeSantis said at the time.
During Sunday's interview, DeSantis made a point of criticizing numerous aspects of the 2020 election, including mail-in ballots, social media company Meta's grants for election administrators and infrastructure, and the decision of social media to limit the spread of unverified information about Hunter Biden's laptop — all of which have been favorite talking points for conservatives attacking the election.
However, when prompted by the interviewer, DeSantis appeared to clearly state that Trump lost the election.
"No, of course, he lost," DeSantis said. "Joe Biden’s the president."
In another interview during a campaign stop in Iowa, DeSantis tried to draw a distinction between some conspiracy theories of 2020 election fraud and the ones he appeared to be giving credence to.
"So it was not an election that was conducted the way I think we want to, but that's different than saying, like, [Venezuelan President Nicolas] Maduro stole votes or something like that. And I think those theories, you know, proved to be unsubstantiated," DeSantis said.
DeSantis avoided mentioning Trump by name, only criticizing him directly during the Sunday interview before immediately pivoting to an attack on Dr. Anthony Fauci, a favorite target of his.
"Here’s the issue that I think is important for Republican voters to think about: Why did we have all those mail votes? Because Trump turned the government over to Fauci. They embraced lockdowns. They did the CARES Act, which funded mail-in ballots across the country," DeSantis said.