Ron DeSantis has rejected Donald Trump's voter fraud claims in his first network television interview of the US presidential campaign, while warning Republicans to drop the scandal-plagued former president -- or risk losing in 2024.

The Florida governor, sitting a distant second behind Trump in Republican primary polling averages, said the last election had not been perfect, but he dismissed the frontrunner's false allegations of foul play by President Joe Biden's Democrats.

"Of course he lost. Of course. Joe Biden's the president," said DeSantis, who sat down with NBC on Sunday after spending two months avoiding the glare of 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 44-year-old governor's remarks in the NBC interview were his clearest yet backing 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 characterized as being susceptible to fraud but which is encouraged by the Republican Party and widely...

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