Ron DeSantis Admits Two Ways He Could Lose 2024 Election

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Monday put forward two things that would result in him or any other Republican losing the 2024 presidential election.

DeSantis is among the packed field of candidates currently running for the GOP's presidential nomination, coming off a strong reelection effort in his home state in last year's midterm election. So far, polls have shown former President Donald Trump leading the pack by a considerable margin as he seeks to retake the White House in 2024, regularly receiving nearly 50 percent support from likely Republican voters.

DeSantis has regularly polled in second place, usually behind Trump by double digits while still being one of the only other candidates to receive more the single-digit support. His campaign has struggled in recent weeks to close the gap against Trump, with critics highlighting his seeming lack of charisma and his overt focus on culture war issues.

Despite these struggles, DeSantis is still seen by many as the only Republican with anything close to a chance of beating Trump for the nomination. Speaking with Today on Monday, the Florida governor reiterated his belief that focusing too much on the former president's ongoing issues, be it the Capitol riot or the Mar-a-Lago documents case, will doom GOP chances of taking the presidency in 2024.

"[If] we are presenting a positive vision for the future, we will win the presidency and we will have a chance to turn the country around," DeSantis said. "If, on the other hand, the election is not about January 20, 2025, but January 6, 2021, or what document was left by the toilet at Mar-a-Lago, if it's a referendum on that, we are going to lose."

In response to an inquiry from Newsweek, a spokesman for Trump's campaign decried DeSantis's statement and suggested he is not fit for higher office.

"Ron DeSantis is either too stupid to understand the threat of the weaponization of the two-tiered justice system or simply doesn't care about Americans being politically prosecuted by the Left," the spokesman wrote. "Either way, he is unfit for higher office of any kind."

DeSantis has made similar warnings to the GOP during the course of his campaign. In late June, during a stop in New Hampshire, he stressed that the party's candidates need to focus on the "failures" of President Joe Biden and not on "relitigating" the past.

"Here's what I know, if this election is about Biden's failures and our vision for the future, we are going to win," DeSantis said. "If it's about relitigating things that happened two, three years ago, we're going to lose."

Trump on Thursday was arraigned in a Washington, D.C., court on federal criminal charges stemming from his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Earlier in the year, he was also indicted on federal charges for mishandling classified documents at his Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against him and dismissed them as politically motivated attempts to hurt his presidential campaign.

Other GOP candidates have, by and large, echoed his sentiments about the charges against him, with some, like Vivek Ramaswamy, pledging to pardon him if they are elected in 2024.

Updated 08/07/2023, 4:59 p.m. ET: This article was updated with a statement from the Donald Trump campaign.