Florida Governor Ron DeSantis entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination on Wednesday during an online Twitter event, calling for a restoration of sanity and a national revitalization, and telling people to “buckle up.”
And he promised Republicans that if he is nominated, he will be the next president.
“I am running for president of the United States to lead our great American comeback,” DeSantis said at the start of the online forum, hosted by Twitter CEO Elon Musk and tech entrepreneur David Sacks, that was marred by technical glitches and started nearly a half hour late.
“We know our country is going in the wrong direction. We see it with our eyes and we feel it in our bones,” he said, listing national woes, including the border crisis and spiking crime. He took a swipe at President Joe Biden, saying the 80-year-old “lacks vigor” and “flounders in the face of our nation’s challenges, and he takes his cues from the woke mob.”
“American decline is not inevitable. It’s a choice,” DeSantis said, calling for a restoration of sanity to the nation, including fiscal and economic sanity. “This also means replacing the woke mind virus with reality, facts, and enduring principles.”
Speaking directly to Republican voters, he confidently pledged that if they choose him as their standard bearer, he will win.
“If you nominate me, you can set your clock to January 20, 2025, at high-noon, because on the west side of the U.S. Capitol I will be taking the oath of office as the 47th president of the United States,” he said. “No excuses. I will get the job done.”
DeSantis has been viewed by many to be the most likely candidate to wrest control of the Republican Party from former president Donald Trump. But the decision to launch his campaign virtually initially appeared to have been a misstep when the Twitter Space feed struggled under the weight of more than a half million users. As the event launched, Musk and Sacks could be heard talking about their servers “melting” and “straining.” The audio feed went in and out and sounded distorted at times.
Biden’s camp trolled DeSantis, tweeting “This link works,” and linking to the president’s fundraising site. Trump mocked his Republican rival on Truth Social: “Is the DeSantis launch FATAL? Yes!”
A DeSantis spokesman responded that there was so much enthusiasm for DeSantis’s vision that the governor “literally busted up the internet.”
There was so much enthusiasm for Governor DeSantis' vision for our Great American Comeback that he literally busted up the internet. Washington is next.
$1 million raised online in one hour… and counting!
— Bryan Griffin (@BryanDGriffin) May 24, 2023
The hour-long event, which was supposed to start at 6 p.m., didn’t really get rolling until closer to 6:30 p.m. “We’re really breaking new ground here,” said Sacks, the host, who used his position to take aim at of DeSantis’s critics. There was a lot of back-rubbing, as DeSantis often expressed his gratitude to Musk for buying Twitter and turning it into a platform dedicated to free speech.
When Sacks asked why DeSantis launched his campaign on Twitter, DeSantis responded by talking about not following the crowd, and he pivoted to a discussion about his response to the Covid-19 pandemic. “It was very, very lonely in a lot of those decisions,” he said.
People who were offered the opportunity to ask questions of DeSantis were exclusively prominent right-wing personalities and the governor’s allies, including Congressman Thomas Massie and critical race theory opponent Christopher Rufo. They asked about his plans to reform federal health agencies and limit the power of the federal bureaucracy.
DeSantis said public health agencies “failed” during the pandemic and need to be “cleaned out.” As president, he said, he would rein in government agencies.
“Buckle up when I get in there,” DeSantis said. “The status quo is not acceptable.”
During the Twitter conversation, DeSantis took a veiled dig at Trump, whom he never named: “We must look forward, not backward.” He said an NAACP allegation that Florida is not safe for minorities “is a total farce.” He bashed media elites for living in a “bubble.” And he claimed Disney is fighting his policies because the company wants “special privileges.”
When news broke on Tuesday that DeSantis planned to launch his pursuit of the presidency on Twitter, Trump’s allies called it an “out of touch” campaign launch on a “niche” platform. The launch has also received criticism as being “too online,” with some on the right suggesting that it portends a candidacy that will rely too much on virtual connections by a candidate who has faced accusations that he is too technocratic and lacks a personal touch with voters.
In addition to the Twitter Spaces announcement, DeSantis also released a short launch video that touched on many of the same themes as his Twitter conversation. In the video, the black screen is divided with a beam of light, revealed to be an opening in a curtain that DeSantis walks through on his way to a stage with an American flag in the background.
“Righting the ship requires restoring sanity to our society, normalcy to our communities, and integrity to our institutions. Truth must be our foundation,” DeSantis says in the video.
DeSantis officially filed with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday afternoon.
He has long been seen by many on the right as the Republican best positioned to take on Trump, his one-time ally, in what is likely to be a grueling and potentially nasty primary race.
The Navy veteran, former congressman, and one-time tea party favorite, whom Trump endorsed in 2018, spent his first term as governor building a national reputation as a smart and pugnacious conservative willing to take on leftwing orthodoxy. He was one of the first governors to reopen his state from Covid-19 lockdowns, helping to turn Florida into a haven for Americans fleeing oppressive coronavirus restrictions in their states.
He’s used his time in office to chalk up high-profile economic, environmental, and culture-war wins, working with his allies in the Republican-dominated state legislature to build his political resume and to turn the “Free State of Florida” into one of the nation’s top testing grounds for conservative ideas. His nearly 20-point re-election win in November only cemented DeSantis’s position as a top-tier Republican presidential contender.
But DeSantis has not been immune to criticism from the right, including from prominent conservatives who have taken issue with his drawn-out feud with the Walt Disney Company and for telling Tucker Carlson in March that “becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia” is not a vital American interest.
He’s also been accused of having a prickly personality, and being a poor retail campaigner and a tough boss who has left behind a trail of former disgruntled staffers. On Tuesday, candidate Nikki Haley’s campaign released a letter stating that rather than being “like Trump without the drama,” DeSantis is more like “Trump Without the Charm,” adding that DeSantis has an “inability to interact directly with voters.”
And despite his efforts to build his resume and raise his political profile, and despite Trump’s long list of controversies – he was impeached twice as president, helped instigate a riot at the U.S. Capitol, had dinner with a white nationalist, was indicted recently for making alleged hush-money payments to a porn star, and found liable of sexually abusing a one-time magazine advice columnist – DeSantis is at this point still a decided underdog in the race.
The Real Clear Politics polling average has Trump with a more than 30-point lead over DeSantis, with all other Republican contenders barely registering.
A Rasmussen poll in mid-May found Trump winning 62 percent of likely Republican voters, the same percentage that a late-April Emerson poll found. DeSantis had support from 17 percent of Republican voters in the Rasmussen poll.
Trump’s poll numbers have only risen since his March indictment.
Still, DeSantis has appeared optimistic about his chances, while Trump has often come across as both aggrieved and concerned about the challenge.
In the lead-up to his announcement, DeSantis emphasized his competence, focus, and political wins. At a recent Iowa stop, he took a swipe at Trump by calling for Republicans to “reject the culture of losing that has impacted our party in recent years” — a talking point he reiterated on Wednesday.
“Governing is not about entertaining,” he said. “Governing is not about building a brand or talking on social media and virtue signaling… It’s ultimately about winning and producing results.”
DeSantis has also focused on electability, telling donors and supporters this month that only he, Trump, and President Joe Biden are “credible” 2024 candidates, and that ultimately Trump can’t win. “And I think of those three, two have a chance to get elected president – Biden and me, based on all the data in the swing states, which is not great for the former president and probably insurmountable because people aren’t going to change their view of him,” DeSantis told supporters on the call.
At 44 years old, DeSantis, a young Gen-Xer, is more than three decades younger than Trump, a 76-year-old Baby Boomer. Trump’s allies have suggested that DeSantis has plenty of time to make a presidential run and should wait his turn.
Trump has accused DeSantis of being disloyal, and he said in March that he “probably” regretted endorsing him in 2018. “I like people that are loyal. This guy was dead. He was dead as a doornail,” Trump told reporters, taking credit for keeping DeSantis’s political career afloat.
As he has done with other prominent rivals, Trump has labeled DeSantis with an unflattering nickname – “Ron DeSanctimonious.” In March, Trump’s allies filed an ethics complaint against DeSantis in Florida, accusing him of illegally benefiting from a shadow presidential campaign (DeSantis’s team called the complaint “frivolous” and “politically motivated”). In an interview last year with Fox News, Trump also warned that if DeSantis entered the race he would reveal information about the governor that “won’t be very flattering.”
“I know more about him than anybody, other than, perhaps, his wife,” Trump said.
While Trump was bad-mouthing him at rallies and fending off legal challenges, DeSantis has spent much of the year racking up legislative victories to better contrast himself with the former president. He’s signed bills establishing universal school choice in Florida; setting a six-week limit for most abortions in the state; outlawing gender-transition procedures for minors; banning diversity, equity, and inclusion spending at public colleges; allowing Floridians to carry concealed weapons without a permit; fighting for lower prescription drug costs; providing toll relief; and signing a budget that includes $850 million to establish a wildlife corridor with biking and hiking trails in the state.
DeSantis’s allies have said that he intends to campaign hard across all 99 counties in Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucus state, which his campaign views as critical, according to a report in the Messenger. A win there could help clear the field heading into New Hampshire, where DeSantis is also investing heavily.
The pro-DeSantis Never Back Down political action committee is planning a $100 million voter outreach push, per the New York Times.
In addition to DeSantis and Trump, other announced Republican presidential contenders include: former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, anti-woke businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, political commentator Larry Elder, and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson. Former vice president Mike Pence, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie are among the potential Republican candidates also reportedly considering presidential runs.