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Ron DeSantis said “of course” Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, as the Florida governor took a new jab at the former president, who is facing criminal charges that he plotted to overturn the results of the last presidential race.
In an interview with NBC set to air on Monday evening, DeSantis, who is challenging Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, offered one of his most emphatic statements yet that the former president lost his 2020 bid to stay in the White House.
“Of course he lost,” DeSantis said. “Joe Biden’s the president.”
Many Republicans, including some other 2024 contenders, have so far been reluctant to criticise Trump for disputing the election results.
Despite facing multiple criminal indictments, Trump is still leading national polls for the nomination by a wide margin. DeSantis remains his closest rival and is hoping he can close the gap in the states that will vote first for the nomination, such as Iowa and New Hampshire.
DeSantis has criticised the Department of Justice’s prosecution of Trump for engaging in a conspiracy to overturn the election results, which was launched last week. But the Florida governor is trying to distance himself from the former president in other ways.
DeSantis told NBC that Trump “didn’t have control of his own government” in 2020 because he approved Covid-19 policies that paved the way for widespread use of mail-in ballots in the election. Democrats used mail-in ballots far more than Republicans, boosting their turnout.
“Donald Trump helped facilitate that whole set of circumstances,” DeSantis said.
In the interview, DeSantis also appeared to moderate his message on abortion, signalling he would not support the kind of sweeping national ban sought by some Christian conservatives within the party.
DeSantis previously signed a draconian six-week ban in Florida that led to criticism that he was too extreme on the issue.
“I do think the federal government would have an interest in, say, preventing post-birth abortions or things that are really horrific, but I don’t think that there’s enough consensus in the country to see a lot of mileage in Congress,” DeSantis said.
“If you want to protect life, it’s a bottom-up movement . . . what Iowa’s done is not what New Hampshire is going to do, and what Wisconsin will do is not what Texas is going to do.”
DeSantis also said he would not seek to impose “penalties” on women for seeking abortions. He backed over-the-counter access to contraception.
Trump is set to campaign in New Hampshire on Tuesday, while DeSantis is heading back to Iowa later in the week.
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