Florida’s ’2024 GOP hopefuls’ back Trump’s unsupported election fraud claims
President Donald Trump isn’t alone as he rails against vote counting in states where his prospects for reelection dim by the ballot: He has some of Florida’s top Republicans behind him.
Several of the state’s most powerful GOP politicians came to Trump’s defense after he prematurely claimed in the hours after polls closed that he’d won the election. As the slow processing of mail ballots in key battlegrounds continues, with the presidency hanging in the balance, Trump’s campaign has sued in key states where his chances of winning were slipping — even though there has so far been no evidence brought forth to support the Trump campaign’s allegations of improper ballot harvesting and thousands of illegally cast ballots.
But in Fox News appearances since the polls closed, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has used the word “troubling” to describe the processing of ballot counting in Wisconsin and suggested “faithless electors” — electoral college voters who buck the will of their voters and cast their support instead for their own preferred candidate — step up in Pennsylvania and Michigan if “there’s a departure from the law” by election officials.
Other high-profile Republicans in Florida quickly joined the chorus after Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., asked on Twitter why Republicans hoping to succeed his father in the White House weren’t being more vocal as the president’s lead over Democratic nominee Joe Biden faded and disappeared.
“The total lack of action from virtually all of the ‘2024 GOP hopefuls’ is pretty amazing,” Trump Jr. tweeted Thursday to his 6 million followers, though he quickly noted that the “vocal and active” governor of Florida was the exception. “They have a perfect platform to show that they’re willing & able to fight but they will cower to the media mob instead.”
Within 90 minutes, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Pensacola congressman who was already amplifying tweets alleging votes cast by the dead, tweeted that the U.S. Department of Justice “should be in court NOW” to intervene in Philadelphia.
U.S. Sen. Rick Scott tweeted links to donate to Trump’s effort to “defend the integrity of the election,” and reminded his followers that he’d filed legislation to require that all eligible votes in federal elections be counted and processed within 24 hours of polls closing on Election Night — even though federal legislation gives military ballots 10 days after the election to arrive and be counted, and state law gives voters until two days after the election to fix problems with their mail ballots.
And U. S. Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted — less explicitly — what he said was a “reminder.”
“When Republicans file election lawsuits because a state won’t follow the law the media calls it ‘unfounded,’ ” he tweeted. “When Democrats file election lawsuit[s] to force a state to violate the law they call it ‘legitimate.’ ”
DeSantis, Gaetz, Rubio and Scott are all reportedly interested in succeeding Trump in 2024 and are based in a state that just voted for Trump by a margin of 3.4%, a landslide by Florida standards. Republicans also dominated state legislative races this year, strengthening the party’s grip on Florida.
All four Florida Republicans are already familiar with contentious recounts and unfounded allegations of voter fraud.
Just two years ago, when he was Florida’s governor and running for U.S. Senate, Scott suggested election officials in South Florida were committing voter fraud in a conspiracy against him as their staff required several days after Election Day to count mail ballots. And in the same election, with DeSantis’ race for governor also down to the wire, Gaetz went to Lauderhill, a suburb in the Democratic stronghold of Broward County, to lead a protest joined by members of the far right hate group Proud Boys.
Meanwhile, as ballots continued to be counted and three statewide races headed to recounts because the margins were so narrow, Rubio tweeted that “Democrat lawyers ... are here to change the results of the election and Broward is where they plan to do it.”
The allegations were picked up by Trump, who claimed election fraud was under way.
But when the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigated in the weeks and months after the election, it found no evidence of ballot tampering. And when a new elections supervisor — a Republican appointed by Scott in Broward County to replace Democrat Brenda Snipes after Scott pushed her out the door — conducted a review, he found that while Snipes left around 40,000 mail ballots uncounted heading into Election Day, confusing Republicans, there was no evidence of fraud. A county auditor found problems with the election, but also reported no fraud.
Rubio, who is reportedly considering a 2024 presidential run after losing the fight for the Republican nomination four years ago to Trump, is now the acting chairman of the U.S. Senate intelligence committee. Rubio has not directly reacted to Trump’s fraud claims, but has alluded to them on Twitter while criticizing media coverage of Republicans’ electoral legal challenges.
“Faith in our election is as important as the outcome,” he tweeted Friday. “Preserving it requires not allowing the outcome to be decided by either the media or a candidate. Transparently count every legally cast vote & allow courts to decide claims of irregularities or fraud on the basis of evidence.”
Trump’s campaign continued to attack the electoral process Friday. In Georgia, his campaign claimed that ballots are being “improperly harvested,” as Biden pulled ahead and a recount seemed likely.
In Pennsylvania, Matt Morgan, the campaign’s general counsel, said in a statement that “there were many irregularities.” The Trump campaign sued there and won a lower court ruling after observers were blocked from viewing ballot counting.
“In Nevada, there appear to be thousands of individuals who improperly cast mail ballots,” Morgan also alleged.
The campaign has not brought forth specific evidence to prove any of its claims. And in Arizona, where Biden’s lead over Trump continues to shrink as more votes are tallied, the Trump campaign has made no claims of election fraud, instead criticizing media outlets who had projected that Biden would win the state.
Not all Florida Republicans are backing Trump’s assertions. Telemundo 51 and NBC 6 analyst Carlos Curbelo, a Republican who frequently bucked Trump when he represented Florida’s 26th Congressional District during the first two years of the Trump presidency, tweeted Thursday that the president was only raising doubts on ballot counting when it came to votes cast for Biden.
“Those votes are not in any way illegal,” tweeted Curbelo, who said it is “important for all public leaders, especially Republicans, to stand up for our democracy at this hour.”
DeSantis — whom Trump repeatedly joked he would “fire” if he lost — has stood up for Trump. He has been the most vocal so far of Florida’s ambitious Republicans, adopting the role that helped him become Florida governor back when he was a congressman from Ponte Vedra and won Trump’s endorsement.
DeSantis has questioned the voting processes in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And he urged Trump to keep fighting when he returned to Fox News for the second straight night.
“A lot of these places don’t know how many ballots are out there and as you mention you get like a 4 a.m. dump of massive votes for one candidate and almost none for the other and people look at that and just scratch their heads,” DeSantis said on the “Ingraham Angle.”
After interviewing the governor, host Laura Ingraham warned Republicans who don’t back Trump: “Conservative voters won’t soon forget this abdication.”
Miami Herald reporter Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.
This story was originally published November 6, 2020 at 12:57 PM.
