Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday he will seek the Republican nomination for president in 2024, setting up a showdown with his erstwhile ally, former President Donald Trump, that will rock the White House race.
DeSantis made the announcement in a video before an audio interview on Twitter with the company’s CEO, Elon Musk.
“We need the courage to lead and the strength to win”, DeSantis said. “I’m Ron DeSantis, and I’m running for president.”
With a rising national profile and what are expected to be vast financial resources, DeSantis, 44, immediately becomes Trump’s biggest rival for the Republican nomination.
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But polls show Trump holding a more than 2-1 lead over the Florida governor, who has long been considered a rising Republican star and the herald of a new generation of party leaders.
Trump, who announced his candidacy in November, has also had an advantage in organizing his campaign in key early-voting states.
DeSantis’ central argument for his candidacy will likely be that he is the only Republican who can defeat Democratic President Joe Biden, who won over Trump in the 2020 election.
Republicans will be watching DeSantis closely to see if he can bounce back from his foreign policy missteps, such as his initial reluctance to voice support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.
US “Lead Great Comeback”
“I’m Ron DeSantis and I’m running for president to lead our great American comebackthe Republican said in a video posted on Twitter.
DeSantis released the recording moments before the start of a scheduled meeting via Twitter with the billionaire owner of the platform, which would be broadcast live.
In the talk with Musk, DeSantis, perceived as Donald Trump’s main rival for the Republican nomination, was expected to formalize his announcement.
However, Twitter appeared to suffer from technical problems as more than 400,000 people tried to listen to the conversation live, and the system’s audio repeatedly crashed before DeSantis went live.
“We have a large number of people connected, so the servers are somewhat saturatedMusk was heard saying.
“We’re reallocating server capacity to handle the load here, it’s really crazy”, the tycoon continued.
The campaign of President Joe Biden, who is seeking re-election, capitalized on the technical problems by tweeting: “This link works”, with a link to their fundraising page.
With information from Reuters and AFP
Source: Gestion
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