CNN
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As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis stumps for some of this year’s midterm candidates ahead of what looks increasingly like a showdown with former President Donald Trump in 2024, he’s seemed to be more nimble than most on the Trump tightrope.
He’s offered a wink and a nod to the election fraud claims that animate the former President’s loyalists while concentrating on base-pleasing stunts like flying migrants to Martha’s Vineyard.
But DeSantis has flirted with election conspiracy theories and installed a state elections chief who appeared committed to the aggressive tactics of activists who have embraced those theories, as described in new CNN reporting Monday. All of that underscores just how many GOP leaders still try to appease a base that fervently believes Trump’s myth that he won. There is no evidence of widespread election fraud in the 2020 presidential results.
DeSantis has carefully skirted the issue in his public comments – avoiding a definitive declaration of whether he believes Joe Biden was rightfully elected president, but never making that topic central to his message – while campaigning for midterm candidates who have trumpeted the former President’s election lies. And yet, CNN’s reporting shows how DeSantis is letting the dangerous falsehoods that threaten this country’s democratic institutions flourish inside his administration in a key swing state.
The Florida governor elevated Cord Byrd, a Republican state lawmaker who has entertained election conspiracy theories, to be Florida’s secretary of state this spring, CNN’s Steve Contorno reported, and records obtained by CNN show that officials within DeSantis’ administration repeatedly met with Florida activists aligned with Trump lieutenants who sought to overturn the 2020 presidential results, including one of Trump’s election lawyers, Cleta Mitchell.
Shortly before taking the job as the state’s elections chief, Byrd addressed a gathering of activists in Orlando who embraced Trump’s election theories, telling them they were going to be “our army on the ground” monitoring local election supervisors “to ensure that they’re doing their job right,” according to leaked recordings obtained by CNN. When DeSantis addressed the same group – the Orlando summit organized by the Conservative Partnership…
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