Ron DeSantis, Pressed by NBC News on 2020 Election, Comes Down Against Trump: ‘Of Course He Lost!’ (Video)
Ron DeSantis has tap-danced around the 2020 presidential election question since long before his own campaign began, but an NBC News reporter finally pinned him down on one key point: Donald Trump lost.
NBC News reporter Dasha Burns hectored DeSantis for a straight answer in an interview that aired Monday on the the “Today” show.
“Can we just put this to bed so you don’t have to be asked about this a million more times?” Burns asked. “Yes or no: Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?”
“Whoever puts their hand on the Bible on January 20th every four years is the winner,” DeSantis said.
That was the beginning of a standard dance-around-it answer for DeSantis, who then repeated what he’s been saying for months, bemoaning mail-in voting, ballot harvesting and Republicans’ failure to “fight back” – without saying outright whether the election had been stolen or not.
“Respectfully, you did not clearly answer that question,” Burns interjected. “And if you can’t give a yes or no on whether or not Trump lost then how – “
“No, of course he lost,” DeSantis said. “Joe Biden’s the president.”
That would seem to settle it – until you get down into the nitty-gritty of what DeSantis means by “won” and “lost.” DeSantis’ answers remained outcome-centric, and on the question of methodology, the Florida governor still sounds unsatisfied.
“When they changed the rules for COVID, I think that was wrong,” he said. “I think some of those changes were unconstitutional, when they went to mass mail-in ballots. I think that’s wrong. I think ballot harvesting is wrong. I think the Zucker bucks were wrong. I think the fact that the FBI was working with Facebook and these other tech companies to censor the Hunter Biden was wrong. And so I don’t think it was the perfect election.”
DeSantis went so far as to say that Trump created the conditions that allowed those things to happen – and that the former president’s own leadership contributed to his historic loss: “Why did we have all those mail-in votes? Because Trump turned the government over to Fauci, they embrace lockdowns, they did the CARES act which funded mail-in ballots across the country – Donald Trump signed that bill that funded the mail ballots that all the Republicans have been so concerned about!”
DeSantis also pointed out that the Hunter Biden story was suppressed under Trump’s watch: “That was Donald Trump’s FBI … he didn’t have control over his own government! We will not let them run circles around us.”
Watch the entire exchange in the video above.
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