DeSantis Has 4 Blunt Words for Trump

Ron DeSantis made some headlines Monday for bluntly rejecting the idea that Donald Trump was the rightful winner of the last election. "Of course he lost," the Florida governor told NBC News. DeSantis has typically sidestepped direct answers to the question, notes the AP, but he appears to be getting more aggressive on the matter. For example, when asked in Iowa on Friday about claims of a stolen election, he responded, "All those theories that were put out did not prove to be true," per Politico. At the New York Times, Nicholas Nehamas frames it this way: "Mr. DeSantis' increasingly aggressive stance suggests that Mr. Trump's legal problems have sent his Republican competitors looking for some way to take advantage."

In the NBC interview, DeSantis first took an indirect approach to the question. "Whoever puts their hand on the Bible on Jan. 20 every four years is the winner," he told the network's Dasha Burns. But when Burns pressed him for a yes-or-no answer on whether Trump won, he responded, "No, of course he lost," adding, "Joe Biden's the president." Afterward, a spokesman for the Trump campaign shot back, "Ron DeSantis should really stop being Joe Biden's biggest cheerleader."

As Axios notes, DeSantis made clear in the interview that he thinks the 2020 election was flawed in many respects—citing, for example, an overuse of mail ballots. On that front, he blamed Trump for giving Anthony Fauci too much sway related to the pandemic. One of his bigger points was a plea to Republicans to keep the race focused on President Biden. If they do, they'll win, he says. "If, on the other hand, the election is not about January 20th, 2025, but January 6th, 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 notes. (More Ron DeSantis 2024 stories.)