‘Of course he lost’: Ron DeSantis REJECTS Trump’s claims of election fraud — and says Republicans will lose if 2024 is a ‘referendum’ in 2020 and January 6

Ron DeSantis rejected Donald Trump’s claim that he actually won the 2020 election, saying Joe Biden was the president.

In his most powerful remarks to date, DeSantis, in an interview with NBC news which aired Monday rejected Trump’s false claims about the 2020 contest and warned Republicans that their party will lose the upcoming election if it is a referendum on the former president.

“Of course he lost,” the Florida governor said of Trump. “Joe Biden is the president.”

“Whoever puts his hand on the Bible every four years on January 20 is the winner,” he noted.

Trump has made the 2020 election a litmus test for Republicans who want his support – and the support of his MAGA faithful.

And DeSantis’ comments come just days after Trump was indicted on charges related to the 2020 election. Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed to be the winner of the 2020 election, arguing that he was the victim of mass mob voter fraud. Multiple recounts and lawsuits confirmed Biden’s victory.

The Florida governor, who is trailing Trump by double digits in polls for the Republican presidential nomination, also had a stark warning about the 2024 presidential contest.

He warned that elections cannot be about Trump, his false claims or the many charges he faces, including one for possession of classified documents at his home in Mar-a-Lago.

“The election is not about January 20, 2025, but about January 6, 2021, or whatever document was left by the toilet in Mar-a-Lago, if it’s a referendum on that, we’re going to lose,” he told NBC’s Dasha Burns .

“If the election is a referendum on Joe Biden’s policies and the failures we’ve seen, and we present a positive vision for the future, we will win the presidency and have a chance to change the country.”

DeSantis did not directly attack Trump, unlike the former president who nicknamed Florida’s governor “Ron Desanctimonious” and criticized his campaign for “burning money” and collapsing in the polls.

But he questioned several of Trump’s decisions as president.

“Donald Trump signed that bill that funded the mail-in ballots that all Republicans were so concerned about,” he noted.

And DeSantis, who raised his national profile by keeping Florida open during COVID and questioning infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, questioned Trump’s handling of the pandemic.

Trump turned government over to Fauci; they embraced the lockdowns,” he said.

Still, DeSantis said in the interview that the 2020 election wasn’t “perfect.”

He criticized Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for censoring Republicans, warned of the widespread availability of mail-in ballots, denounced “vote harvesting,” where third parties collect and return voters’ ballots, and said social media outlets are burying news about Hunter Biden .

“I think people in the media and elsewhere want to pretend that somehow this was the perfect election. … I don’t think it was a good election,” DeSantis said. “But I also think the Republicans are not fighting back. You have to fight back when that happens.’

Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized Ron DeSantis in the fight for the GOP nomination

Ron DeSantis warned Republicans that if the 2024 election is around January 6, the party will lose to Joe Biden

He also argued that he is the most viable GOP candidate to beat Biden in the election, saying the contest will come down to independent voters, a group he won in his last Florida gubernatorial election.

“If you look at how independent voters broke, they broke for Biden against Donald Trump,” he said. If Trump had just won independent voters, he would have won the Electoral College. And I think what we showed in Florida, yes, we won independent voters by 18 percentage points. You can’t win a national election with Republicans alone. You have to have more attraction than that. And if we do, we can win.’

DeSantis and Biden are essentially tied to the RealClearPolitics Poll Average of a match between the two. Trump and Biden are also tied their match.

But Trump leads DeSantis by 38 points in the RealClearPolitics average of the Republican presidential nomination. DeSantis is the only other contender to achieve double digits.

His interview with NBC News comes as his campaign is in the middle of a reset after jumping off the starting gate. Some employees have been fired and the campaign has turned into an economic message.

In addition, DeSantis and his team are targeting Iowa, a state that Trump lost in the 2016 Republican primary. DeSantis has made some gains in the Iowa polls with his refocusing on that state.

The interview also comes ahead of the first Republican debate on Aug. 23 in Milwaukee.