Ron DeSantis says he was too busy overseeing an execution in Florida to watch the Trump arraignment

• Ron DeSantis says he missed most of the coverage of Trump's arraignment on Thursday.
• The reason? He was busy overseeing an execution in Florida.
• "We had an execution yesterday, so I was tied up with that for most of the day," he said.

While the political world was tuned in to watch former President Donald Trump's appearance in a Washington, DC federal court on Thursday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was busy overseeing an execution in Florida.

Speaking with reporters after a campaign event at a brewery in Iowa, the 2024 GOP presidential candidate said he only saw some of the coverage of Trump's arraignment.

"I saw a little bit," he said, according to the New York Times. "Unfortunately, one of the things as governor that you have to do is oversee executions. So we had an execution yesterday, so I was tied up with that for most of the day."

On Thursday, a 61-year-old Florida man named James Barnes was executed via lethal injection at the Florida State Prison in Starke. In 2006, Barnes was convicted of murdering and raping a nurse in 1988. DeSantis signed his death warrant on June 22.

Barnes was the fifth inmate executed by the State of Florida this year. DeSantis signed a law earlier this year to make it easier to execute people in Florida, a move seen by some as an effort to burnish his tough-on-crime credentials as he launched his presidential campaign. 

At that same campaign stop, DeSantis also made his strongest comments yet about Trump's 2020 election claims.

"It was not an election that was conducted the way I think that we want to, but that's different than saying [Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro] stole votes or something like that," he said, according to the New York Times. "Those theories, you know, proved to be unsubstantiated."