A video clip of Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis from two and a half years in the past has resurfaced and is being shared on social media, during which the 2024 presidential candidate recommended utilizing a discredited authorized idea in an effort to overturn the outcomes of the 2020 election to assist then-President Donald Trump stay in workplace.
The video suggests DeSantis, like Trump, is prepared to embrace far-fetched authorized theories in an effort to assist himself or different Republicans receive positions of energy, even when they go towards the democratic preferences of voters.
Within the video, DeSantis discusses attainable treatments to assist Trump win the 2020 election, even after most media shops on the time — together with Fox Information, the cable information station the place the interview befell — had already known as the election for President Joe Biden. DeSantis suggests using a facet of the fringe, right-wing independent legislature theory, which posits, partly, that state legislatures are the only deciders of how electors are chosen to symbolize states within the Electoral Faculty.
The Florida governor additionally encourages viewers in states Trump misplaced to President Joe Biden to strain their state legislatures to make the most of the speculation…
“If you happen to’re in these states which have Republican Legislatures like Pennsylvania and Michigan and all these locations, name your state Representatives and your state Senators,” DeSantis said in the clip. “Below Article II of the Structure, presidential electors are completed by the Legislatures and the schemes they create.”
DeSantis added that he would “exhaust each choice” in an effort to produce what he stated could be a “honest rely” of votes, though all indications on the time — and ever since — confirmed that the preliminary vote rely was each honest and bonafide.
Whereas the Structure does give legislatures the power to resolve how electors are chosen, it doesn’t give them the best to overturn elections or to resolve how electors are picked after voters have already determined — the clause merely provides state governments the power to move legal guidelines to find out what the method can be. Since the middle of the 19th century, each state has chosen its electors by way of an election by eligible voters.
Seen as a fringe idea on the time DeSantis recommended it on Fox Information, america Supreme Court docket has since rejected different facets of the impartial state legislature idea, which asserted that the legislature alone has the authority to resolve how congressional maps are drawn.
A staunch Trump supporter when the interview was recorded, DeSantis has since said he doesn’t consider Trump gained the 2020 race.
Earlier this month in an interview with NBC News correspondent Dasha Burns, DeSantis was requested who he thought gained the race, Biden or Trump. At first, DeSantis tried to sidestep the problem — “Whoever places their hand on the Bible on January 20 each 4 years is the winner,” he responded.
Burns pressed DeSantis to be extra direct. “Respectfully, you didn’t clearly reply that query,” she identified, asking whether or not the Florida governor may give a “sure” or “no” response as a substitute.
“No, after all he misplaced. Joe Biden’s the president,” DeSantis lastly relented.
DeSantis will doubtless have to clarify to voters why he, like Trump, could be supportive of utilizing then-untested authorized theories in an effort to justify overturning the desire of the folks — that’s, after all, if he’s profitable in changing into the Republican Get together’s presidential nominee. Because it stands proper now, DeSantis, like all different present GOP main candidates, is polling far behind Trump.
A recent Quinnipiac University poll published this week, for instance, exhibits that 57 p.c of Republican-aligned voters again Trump for the celebration’s choose. DeSantis, in the meantime, obtains simply 18 p.c assist, whereas businessman Vivek Ramaswamy garners 5 p.c and former Vice President Mike Pence will get 4 p.c within the ballot.
