The Republican Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, will announce his presidential candidacy for the White House in 2024 on Wednesday during a live conversation on Twitter with Elon Musk, a source close to AFP said on Tuesday. The state president recently gained prominence for his public dispute against Disney.
This information was quickly confirmed by the owner of the social network. “I’m going to interview Ron DeSantis and he has a big announcement to make,” Musk said. to the Wall Street Journal.
The conversation between the two men is scheduled for Wednesday at 6:00 p.m. Washington time (10:00 p.m. GMT).
The announcement will be accompanied by the release of a video and the start of a three-day retreat in Miami for some of DeSantis’ wealthiest donors, to whom he will give details of the campaign before embarking on a tour next week of the various states that vote early.
Trump vs. DeSantis
DeSantis will trust to borrow the power and recognition of Musk to face the favorite donald trump, who despite the legal scandals continues to sweep the polls to surpass all the Republican candidates combined.
The governor, who has led Florida since 2018, entered the campaign that year as an almost unknown congressman; but the support of the then president allowed him to achieve a narrow victory.
From his Tallahassee office, DeSantis has been distancing himself from the billionaire and occupying its own space on the American right, with very conservative policies on issues such as education, abortion or immigration.
The uproar caused by some of his measures has given him enormous media attention beyond the borders of Florida, in the southeast of the country. But the battle for the Republican inauguration will reveal whether his new status in the party is enough to prevail over Trump.
According to numerous polls, the former president leads the 44-year-old governor by a wide marginre-elected in November 2022 with a landslide victory.
The ad format offers DeSantis a double advantage, giving him access to Musk’s 140 million supporters, many of whom are part of Trump’s constituency, and, if he wins the nomination, it will appeal to a portion of voters. younger and less conservative. An opportunity to reach the White House.
Many agree that DeSantis, the son of a working-class family, a war veteran and a graduate of Harvard and Yale, is seriously lacking in charisma against the exuberant real estate mogul.
The way of communicating his candidacy has already been mocked by Trump’s entourage. “Announcing his candidacy on Twitter is perfect for DeSantis. That way he doesn’t have to interact with anyone,” ironized one of the former president’s advisers in a conversation with AFP.
A fierce fight awaits the governor of Florida against the New York billionaire, a man immune to scandals, whose legal troubles seem to further mobilize his many followers.
Trump, who announced his new candidacy in November, boasts of raising millions of dollars in donations since he was indicted by a New York court in April for accounting falsification.
For his part, DeSantis will also be able to count on generous donations — $110 million to date — with which he hopes to close the gap and flood the country with campaign ads.
The new guard of the Republican Party?
In a recent video from the governor’s political action committee, a man puts up a sticker “DeSantis President” on the body of a car, above one with the slogan “Trump 2016”.
The ad summarizes the message that the governor wants to convey to the voters: against the 76-year-old magnate, DeSantis wants to embody the new guard of the Republican Party.
The other declared candidates in the Republican race — Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Asa Hutchinson — rarely exceed 5% of voting intentions in the polls, so everything points to a battle between the Florida governor and the man who promoted it.
Hostilities between them began long before DeSantis entered the ring. Trump has spent weeks multiplying the criticism and mockery of his rival on his social networks and at his rallies, while DeSantis has counterattacked in his own, more subtle way, recalling what hurts the former president the most: his defeat in the last presidential elections against the Democrat Joe Biden.
The candidate chosen by the Republicans will face the person designated by the Democratic Party in November 2024.
The successful writer Marianne Williamson and a nephew of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Robert Kennedy Junior, are currently the party’s only candidates against Biden. His chances of winning the inauguration are slim.
Source: Ambito
