Ron DeSantis warns Republicans of losing presidency if Donald Trump not dropped

Presidential candidate for 2024 and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis warned his party Sunday of losing elections if Republicans do not drop the three-time indicted former president Donald Trump while rejecting his false claims of elections fraud.

Ron DeSantis while speaking in his first interview with NBC News since announcing his presidential bid, maintained that the last election had not been perfect, but he also dismissed Donald Trump's false allegations of foul play by President Joe Biden's Democrats.

Florida governor is trailing far behind former president Trump, sitting a distant second in Republican primary polling averages.

"Of course, he lost. Of course. Joe Biden's the president," said DeSantis after spending two months avoiding the mainstream broadcast audiences, in favor of mostly conservative cable and internet stations. 

NBC provided early excerpts of the interview, which is airing Monday.

The majority of Republican primary voters believe wrongly that Trump won the last election, according to polls, so bolstering the former president's false claims of fraud has become a litmus test for those hoping to rise in the party ranks.

The governor's remarks were his clearest yet backing for the legitimacy of the election, described as the "most secure in American history" by Trump's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

DeSantis objected, however, to what he sees as an over-reliance in 2020 on mail-in voting, a practice Trump has falsely characterised as being susceptible to fraud but which is encouraged by the Republican Party and widely available in Florida.

The twice-impeached Trump has been indicted over his efforts to overturn the election that culminated in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol.

The case is the most serious of four criminal probes that have yielded dozens of felony charges, including allegations that the 77-year-old billionaire endangered national security by storing classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago beach resort in Florida.

Ron DeSantis — who was interviewed alongside his wife, Casey — pulled his punches on Donald Trump's legal woes, arguing that focusing too heavily on the former president's multiple prosecutions would spell defeat for Republicans.

"If the election is a referendum on Joe Biden's policies and the failures that we've seen, and 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," 44-year-old Governor 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."