Gov. Ron DeSantis was asked late last week whether he expected Donald Trump to accept the results of the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. The Florida Republican has apparently given the issue a fair amount of thought, because he didn’t hesitate to say that the former president is likely to lie to the public:
“If Trump loses, he will say it’s stolen no matter what, absolutely. He will try to delegitimize the results. He did that against Ted Cruz in 2016. He will do that. Even when, like, ‘The Apprentice’ didn’t get an Emmy he said [it was fixed]. I don’t think there’s been a single time he’s ever been in competition for something where he didn’t get it, where he’s accepted [the results].”
As the video of the exchange made clear, the governor appeared to have strong feelings on the matter.
On the surface, DeSantis’ assessment is both fair and accurate. When Trump lost the Iowa caucuses nearly eight years ago, he wasted little time in questioning the legitimacy of the process. Indeed, DeSantis’ entire line of argument is compelling: Trump only accepts the accuracy of election results when he approves of the outcome, as part of a larger pattern in which his ego is prioritized over democracy.
But just below the surface, there’s a disconnect between the message and the messenger. As a New York Times report noted:
For several years, Mr. DeSantis appeared to play both sides of the manufactured controversy over the 2020 election. As governor, he set up a new police unit to monitor the integrity of Florida elections. Before last year’s midterms, he campaigned with Republicans who had vociferously denied the results.
While the Floridian has been cautious about explicitly endorsing Trump’s “Big Lie” about the 2020 election, DeSantis has been only too eager to exploit the conspiratorial nonsense when it suited his purposes.
In Florida, for example, the governor has elevated election deniers to key offices, while creating an elections-crime unit without cause. DeSantis also signed new voting restrictions in the Sunshine State, based on concerns about irregularities that didn’t occur.
Away from his home state, the Republican has also hit the campaign trail in support of election deniers, and assured far-right voters that he’d “take a stand against the left’s schemes.”
It was against this backdrop that DeSantis said, “If Trump loses, he will say it’s stolen no matter what, absolutely. He will try to delegitimize the results.”
That’s right, but the next question is why it took DeSantis so long to acknowledge the problem with such tactics.
