DeSantis acknowledges Trump’s election defeat and is attacked as a “cheerleader”.

“Of course he lost”
DeSantis openly acknowledges Trump’s election defeat for the first time – and is attacked by him as a “Biden cheerleader”.

Trump’s myth of the “stolen” 2020 election has united US Republicans for years. Now Ron DeSantis, one of the most promising candidates, is also opposing Trump’s claim.

Donald Trump has been questioning the result of the 2020 US election since election night, knowing that many US Republicans are behind him. But unity is slowly crumbling. Now the most promising party competitor has Ron DeSantis openly acknowledged the legitimacy of the election for the first time. The counterattack was not long in coming.

“No, of course he lost,” DeSantis said bluntly for the first time in an interview with the TV station “NBC News”. “Joe Biden is the President.” DeSantis previously emphasized that whoever took the oath won. Only when asked for a clear answer did the commitment to the legitimacy of the election come.

Attack on Trump

The statement can clearly be understood as an attack on Donald Trump. Accordingly, his reaction was not long in coming. “Ron DeSantis really should stop being Joe Biden’s cheerleader,” Trump spokesman Steve Cheung told NBC. The ex-president himself has not yet commented directly on the interview.

The allegation of voter fraud has been Trump’s core message since election night 2020. The election was stolen, he keeps claiming. The United States actually has a Republican president – ​​himself. The claim, repeated by many Republican politicians, finally culminated in the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, shortly before his successor took office.

Election fraud as a Republican consensus

So far, the question of alleged election fraud has also been difficult for Trump’s internal opponents. Despite numerous investigations that have found no irregularities, polls show that 69 percent of Republican voters agree that Biden is not the president-elect. In the general population, however, only 38 percent of voters believe that.

Since Donald Trump has been threatened with indictment for the false statements, more and more of his competitors seem to see it as a weakness. Before DeSantis, Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence and his former supporter Chris Christie were also the first candidates to openly oppose the allegations of voter fraud. DeSantis had already admitted for the first time over the weekend that the allegations in investigations had not come true. Even this step had already been assessed as risky.

Sources:nbc news,MSNBC, Yougov, CNN