Nearly 3 years later, DeSantis directly addresses Trump's 2020 election claims

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — While many have weighed in on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ reset, his decision to finally answer questions about the 2020 elections is worth noting — especially since DeSantis himself has repeatedly said that Republicans will lose against President Joe Biden if they keep dwelling on the past.

DeSantis, in a newly posted interview with NBC News, said point blank about former President Donald Trump: "Of course he lost. Joe Biden's the president."

“I think what people in the media and elsewhere, they want to act like somehow this was just like the perfect election,” DeSantis said. “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.”

And during a campaign stop in Iowa on Friday, DeSantis was asked if he thought the election was stolen, as asserted by Trump and his supporters. “I’ve said many times, the election is what it is. All those theories that were put out did not prove to be true,” he responded.

He also criticized 2020 as an election that was not “conducted the way I think we want to. But that's different than saying [Venezuelan leader Nicolas] Maduro stole votes or something like that. And I think those theories proved to be unsubstantiated.” Suffice to say, some of Trump's supporters reacted furiously to DeSantis' supporters.

But let’s roll back the tape. In May 2021, when asked if the election was rigged (not once but twice), DeSantis didn’t answer and instead pivoted to an election revamp he pushed for earlier that year that placed limits on “ballot harvesting” and banned election offices from taking grants from outside groups — a backlash to election administration grants handed out by a group that received backing from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. DeSantis cited both those issues again in Iowa.

DeSantis also previously rejected the idea of carrying out a statewide forensic audit of the 2020 election even though it was an idea some local Republican activists pushed — they contended that Trump should have won Florida by a bigger margin than he did. But again, DeSantis didn't address whether he thought the election was stolen.

Shortly after DeSantis shot down the audit idea, he advocated for the creation of a stand-alone election crimes office that would undertake voter fraud investigations that have been highly criticized.

Ultimately, DeSantis, who initially praised how smooth the 2020 election went, repeatedly pushed to clamp down on Florida’s election laws — restricting the use of drop boxes for example — without ever directly addressing Trump’s unproven allegations of fraud. Those allegations hovered in the air as he pressed ahead.

A version of this first appeared in Florida Playbook. Click here to sign up for the morning newsletter.