DeSantis asked if Trump lost due to fraud, points to recent, frequent Republican defeats

Florida's Voice ^ | May. 15, 2023, 12:03 p.m. ET | Eric Daugherty

[conservative98]

SARASOTA, Fla. (FLV) – A reporter asked Gov. Ron DeSantis whether he believes that former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden due to “fraud.”

The reporter noted comments from DeSantis over the weekend in Iowa where he urged Republicans reject a “culture of losing.”

“Do you acknowledge that Trump lost and there wasn’t all this fraud that he talks about?” the reporter asked DeSantis.

“Well, I look at the last however many election cycles: 2018, we lost the House […] We lost the Senate in 2020, Biden becomes president and has done a huge amount of damage,” he said. “Very unpopular in 2022, and we were supposed to have this big red wave.”

“Other than, like, Florida and Iowa, I didn’t see a red wave across this country,” DeSantis continued. “I think the party has developed a culture of losing. I think that there’s not accountability.”

He pointed to his accomplishments and electoral success in Florida in 2022, winning by nearly 20 points.

“You can sit there and talk about cable news, social media, all these other things that people are fixated on. And for me, it’s like, OK, what’s that true north?” he said. “You obviously got to win otherwise you don’t get a ticket to the dance. But once you do that, how are you going to be able to actually bring about big change to make people’s lives better?”

[PCPOET7]

talking about stolen elections only riles up those like me that believe the election was stolen.... to win we don’t ignore this but also it won’t win a presidential election if we get stuck in the weeds talking about it. best to point out the crap currently happening with the democrat party... I think dems are real vulnerable to the hypocrisy they are causing in the court system.

[newzjunkey]

He’s not wrong about the losses but he failed to attribute any cause. On the one hand he tried to avoid Leftist media narratives about election fraud which is smart but it’s also frustrating he didn’t offer a reason. I assume he’s implying it’s Trump’s fault.

[George from New England]

We are in for more than a year of MSM pouring fuel on the fire. MSM WANT A FIGHT.

[Phoenix8]

Let’s see the list of deep staters that sponsored Desantis and how much they gave.

Here is the top contributors and I dont see Soros or Bill Gates anywhere:

https://www.opensecrets.org/officeholders/ron-desantis/contributors?cycle=2022&id=17657831

[MountainWalker]

And if Fred Trump hadn’t given Donald 140 million dollars in today’s money to start his empire, he’d be just another big talking loudmouth from Queens.

[wardaddy]

He answers like the politician he is

He didn’t push the new voting regs in Florida for no reason

He prefers to go along with Medias canard The Big Lie

Like Insurrection

And Russian Interference

Pass unless no choice

[TomGuy]

“Do you acknowledge that Trump lost and there wasn’t all this fraud that he talks about?” the reporter asked

What a LOADED question!!!

[dragnet2]

Typical phony BS response from a career lawyer politician..

[House Atreides]

“ If Trump hadn’t of stepped in for Ron, he would have lost to the drug addict homo Andrew Gillum the first time around.”
******************************************************

Possibly. Possibly not. Just sayin’.

[newzjunkey]

Trump should have accepted defeat once the electors were chosen and pivoted to what’s next. Doesn’t mean abandoning the issue of election integrity, because that’s critical, but he harped on it until it drowned out everything else. It accomplished nothing except fueling the Dems attack against him and America First principles. I guess he banked on the idea that if he denies the results it’ll keep some people interested in him until 2024–get nominated while alienating swing voters is a great strategy /s—when he could have blamed his loss on covid anxiety while outlining a positive agenda and contrasting records with Biden. He’s done nothing to win over voters exhausted by Trump drama. He hasn’t learned anything from 2020 because he doesn’t accept he lost in no small part because he pursued a failed strategy, took the bait from Dems and helped them motivate low information and social media addicted voters.

I think Joe is likely to win a rematch unless something drastic happens in the economy that the media can’t spin away.

[ProudDeplorable]

How did Joe Biden “bring about big change to make people’s lives better”? But somehow he magically won in 2020 and stopped a red wave in 2022. Funny how that works.

[wiseprince]

If the Rats were the Repukes they’d say, We lost both houses of congress in 2016, the Republicans extended their lead the Senate. We finally got it together in 2020 but we immediately lost the house again
We are broken as a party.

[dware]

Continuing to harp on stolen elections only gets you one defeat after another

Harping, yes. Doing something? No. But, we've done nothing to end the fraud, so it will continue. I will be voting for Trump in '24, but I expect him to lose due to the fraud that will commence.

[rdcbn1]

Was a huge fan of DeSantis, but hate to say it, the guy is not ready for prime time.

[Rdct29]

The republican establishment would rather lose then support Maga candidates running for the first time. That's a big problem. I totally disagree with Trump when it came to the election of the head of the republican party. Rona Mcromney should have been thrown out of that position. It was a huge mistake to not replace her. She sucks at her job. Democrats run circles around the RNC every election. If we can't win in 2024 I'm afraid we will never win again. A tomato can should be able to defeat Biden in 2024. His performance will be so bad it will be impossible to sugar coat it or hide it.

[wiseprince]

Elections VERY obviously not legitimate. AZ 2022 was clear cheating. If you’re not willing to question that you’re not fit to lead. Of course this guy isn’t a leader. He’s an administrator(by his own admission). Good when the direction is already clear but doesn’t every forge a new path. Such leadership is reserved for the bold and that’s what needed right now.

[Trump Girl Kit Cat]

If Trump had just SHUT UP about it not one damn thing would be done to fix it, constant attention gets people aware and moving!! Our elections are corrupt as hell we NEED people being watched CLOSELY!!

[srmanuel]

IMO, Republicans have a hard time defending things like Abortion and Election Integrity because they don’t really believe in it.

Instead of claiming elections are stolen or rigged, I would say, regardless of election cheating any election that takes more than 24 hours to determine the winner causes everyone to lose faith in the system, things like, lack of voter ID, universal mail in voting, ballot harvesting and ranked choice voting that no one can explain causes delays in knowing who won and does nothing but create doubts on who actually won.

When states like Florida can count 7.5 million votes and report the results by midnight of election day and states like Arizona take a week or more to count one third of that number of votes, people naturally assume something is wrong, regardless of the truth.

Meanwhile the country is literally falling apart and many Republicans are still complaining about 2020.

[x]

Autocorrect is king now. “Calls it as he sees it” is another idiom, and something like that could have been the one intended.

DeSantis didn’t say there was no steal. He avoided saying that. Nobody knows who really won. If Biden stole enough votes to win, that can’t be definitively proved, and the results aren’t going to be changed now.

[srmanuel]

The only possible way to change election laws is to actually win elections and then change the laws.

If the election system in certain places is crooked, a candidate and party have 2 choices, keep complaining about rigged elections and lose, play the game using Democratic rules and have a better chance of winning.