Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is set to launch his Presidential campaign on Twitter Spaces with billionaire Elon Musk.
Florida Governor and senior Republican leader Ron DeSantis is all set to officially launch his campaign to contest in the 2024 Presidential Elections of the United States. Governor DeSantis will make the official announcement on Twitter Spaces, a platform people can conduct live audio conversations with other Tweeps, and users can interact. Twitter CEO and world’s second-richest man Elon Musk will host the Twitter Spaces conversation, scheduled to begin at 18:00 local time (03:30 Indian Standard Time).
DeSantis v/s Trump
Governor DeSantis is viewed as former President Donald Trump’s primary contender for the Republican nomination. The Governor had refuted rumours of his Presidential run earlier in 2021. DeSantis came in 2nd in a straw poll that was conducted in 2022 at the Conservative Political Action Conference (PAC) on the 2024 Presidential nomination for the Republican Party. In the poll, DeSantis secured 28% of the vote, second to former President Trump who secured 59% of votes.
Interestingly, when DeSantis and Trump were pitted against incumbent President Biden in a poll, 48% people said they would vote for Governor DeSantis against 45% who said that would vote for President Biden. When the same question was asked with President Trump against President Biden, only 45% people responded in favour of Trump. Governor DeSantis is trailing in Republican polls but leading in national polls.
Florida Gubernatorial Elections 2022
Since 2022, DeSantis is seen as a potential candidate for the 2024 Presidential Elections. Several intellectuals and political pundits have predicted that the Governor can defeat Trump because of the negative impact of January 6 hearings on Trump. These speculations were augmented after Governor Ron DeSantis secured a landslide victory in the gubernatorial elections of 2022. DeSantis was re-elected as the Governor of Florida with a whopping 19.4 percentage point victory over his Democrat contender Charlie Crist. This was Florida’s biggest margin in a gubernatorial election in around 40 years, which boosted the Governor DeSantis’s popularity and solidified his bid for presidency.
Elon Musk’s Gambit
Twitter owner Elon Musk is hosting the Twitter Spaces conversation where Governor DeSantis will make his official announcement to run for the Presidency. He clarified that he is not planning to endorse Governor DeSantis’s bid. Instead, he simply wants to utilise Twitter as a “public town square” where important announcements are made. The billionaire has implicitly expressed support for DeSantis earlier, tweeting his endorsement for someone “sensible and centrist.”
The Spaces conversation will be moderated by David Sacks who is known to be a very close ally of Musk and a supporter of Ron DeSantis. Musk also aims to use Governor DeSantis’s announcement to boost the popularity of Twitter, a platform whose stocks have witnessed a constant upheaval ever since Musk acquired the company a year ago. In return, DeSantis will get a huge platform to reach millions of Tweeps, including but not limited to Musk’s 140 million followers.
DeSantis to Enter Competitive List of Contenders
Governor DeSantis will join a long list of contenders for the Republican nomination, with several candidates already having announced their presidency bids. Republican Senator Tim Scott had launched his Presidential bid last week. Apart from Scott, Nikki Haley is another contender for the Republican nomination, who had launched her campaign earlier this year. Former President Donald Trump is in contention and currently leading all Republican polls. With Governor DeSantis entering this competitive list of contenders, it remains to be seen who will bag the nomination.
