Ron DeSantis to announce presidential run in Twitter Spaces with Elon Musk
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Ron’s running, officially.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will formally announce his entry into the 2024 presidential race Wednesday evening during a Twitter Spaces event with the social media platform’s CEO Elon Musk.
A source close to DeSantis confirmed the event, first reported by NBC News, would take place at 6 p.m., the first part of a media blitz that will also see him be interviewed by former congressman and current Fox News host Trey Gowdy on the network’s 8 p.m. program, “Fox News Tonight.” DeSantis will also join conservative talk radio host Mark Levin for an interview later in the hour.
DeSantis’ announcement will also coincide with him formally filing notice of his candidacy with the Federal Election Commission as well as the start of a two-day fundraising blitz in Miami.
An official kickoff event will take place at a later date in the governor’s hometown of Dunedin, Fla.
An official kickoff event will take place at a later date in his hometown of Dunedin, Fla.
Polls have consistently shown DeSantis, 44, to be the strongest challenger to former President Donald Trump, 76, though most national surveys have also shown the 45th president leading his closest competitor by double digits.
Trump, in anticipation of DeSantis’ forthcoming challenge, has repeatedly attacked the younger man for perceived disloyalty and derided him last year as an “average REPUBLICAN Governor with great Public Relations.”
More recently, the former president borrowed left-wing talking points to argue that DeSantis had “left a wake of destruction” in the Sunshine State, to which the DeSantis-supporting Never Back Down political action committee responded by offering to help Trump — a recently minted Florida resident — pack his bags for deep-blue California.
On Tuesday, Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump’s Make America Great Again, Inc. super PAC, called DeSantis’ event with Musk “one of the most out-of-touch campaign launches in modern history. The only thing less relatable than a niche campaign launch on Twitter, is DeSantis’ after party at the uber elite Four Seasons resort in Miami.”
“Everyday [sic] more and more Americans are realizing just how out of step Ron DeSantis is with their values and how unelectable he really is,” Leavitt added. “From his votes to cut Social Security and Medicare, to his support of a national sales tax that would raise taxes on 90% of families, to his vote in support of Obama’s TPP which sent jobs to China, to his vote against funding for President Trump’s wall, Ron DeSantis just isn’t ready to be President. President Trump is ready on day one to turn our country around, reverse Biden’s disasterous [sic] policies and make America great again.
Since his narrow election as Florida governor in 2018, DeSantis has made a national name for himself by diving headlong into the culture wars, staking out staunchly conservative positions on everything from COVID-19 vaccination mandates to the teaching of gender and sexuality in schools.
The governor also won plaudits from the Republican grassroots by signing a bill banning most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy and enacting another law allowing Florida residents to carry concealed firearms without a permit.
However, DeSantis has made the most headlines over his ongoing legal and political battle with Disney, in which he moved to strip the House of Mouse of its special local governing status after the entertainment giant came out against a bill barring lessons on sexuality and gender identity in kindergarten through the third grade.
Sunshine State voters rewarded DeSantis this past November, re-electing him by nearly 20 percentage points over Democrat Charlie Crist, a former Republican governor.
In recent days, DeSantis has mused openly about what he might do if he runs for president and is elected to two full terms. In a speech Monday to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Orlando, the governor reflected on the future of the Supreme Court.
“I think if you look over the next two presidential terms, there is a good chance that you could be called upon to seek replacements for Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito and the issue with that is, you can’t really do better than those two,” the governor said. ““If you replace a Clarence Thomas with somebody like a [Chief Justice John] Roberts or somebody like that, then you’re gonna actually see the court move to the left, and you can’t do that.”
“So it is possible that in those eight years, we have the opportunity to fortify Justices Alito and Thomas as well as actually make improvements with those others, and if you were able to do that, you would have a 7-2 conservative majority on the Supreme Court that would last a quarter-century.”
Unlike DeSantis, Trump is prohibited from running in 2028 if he wins back the White House in 2024 thanks to the 22nd Amendment, which states that no one can be elected president more than twice.
DeSantis will also enter the race with a sizable war chest, as his state-level campaign funds and associated political action committees had racked up more than $110 million in donations as of late last month. By comparison, Trump’s MAGA Inc., had a relatively paltry $55 million cash on hand as of the end of last year.
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