Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ‘unsubstantiated’ Donald Trump’s election fraud theories in Iowa

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is seen as a potential challenger to Donald Trump in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, has distanced himself from the former president’s claims of election fraud.

DeSantis said on Friday that Trump’s allegations were not backed by evidence and that the election results should be accepted.

“The election is what it is. All those theories that were put out did not prove to be true … It was not an election that was conducted the way I think that we want to, but that’s different than saying [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro stole votes or something like that,” DeSantis told reporters in Iowa, where he was attending a conservative conference.

“And I think those theories, you know, proved to be unsubstantiated,” he added.

Trump, who has refused to concede his defeat to Joe Biden, was indicted on Thursday by a federal grand jury in Washington, DC, on charges of conspiracy and obstruction for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election.

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Prosecutors say that the former President made “knowingly false” statements about voter fraud, pressured state officials to change the vote counts, attempted to install fake electors in swing states, and urged his vice president to reject Biden’s victory.

One of the emails from a senior campaign adviser to Trump described his strategy as “conspiracy s— beamed down from the mothership.”

The Florida governor expressed his opposition to the indictment shortly after it was announced on Tuesday night. He tweeted that he believed Americans should have the right to move their cases from Washington, DC, to their home districts, because Washington, DC, was a “swamp” and its jury pool was biased. He also said that he would end the “weaponization of the federal government” and the “politicization of the rule of law.”

Trump remains the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination, according to national polls, but his support has eroded in some key states.

A New York Times/Siena College poll released on Friday showed that Trump had 44% support among likely Iowa GOP caucus-goers, while DeSantis had 20%. The poll also found that DeSantis had higher ratings than Trump on morality and likability.

DeSantis said he was busy with other matters and did not watch much of Trump’s arraignment on Thursday. “Unfortunately, one of the things as governor that you have to do is oversee executions,” he said. “So we had an execution yesterday, so I was tied up with that for most of the day.”

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The 44-year-old has avoided directly attacking Trump, but has hinted at a “culture of losing” after the Republicans lost control of the House, the Senate, and the White House in recent years. He has also criticized some aspects of the 2020 election, such as the expansion of mail-in voting due to the pandemic and the censorship of The Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

“The way you conduct a good election that people have confidence in [is] you don’t change the rules in the middle of the game,” DeSantis said.

“You don’t ballot harvest. You don’t do Zuckerbucks, and clearly, having the agencies work with Facebook to censor things like Hunter Biden, that’s unfair.”

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