Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will launch his 2024 presidential campaign on May 24 in a Twitter Spaces interview with Elon Musk, The Epoch Times confirmed.
The news of the campaign launch follows months of speculation about the Florida governor’s formal entry into the 2024 race. DeSantis is jumping into the expanding GOP field currently dominated by former President Donald Trump.
Bryan Griffin, the press secretary for the DeSantis campaign operation, confirmed the plans in a text message to The Epoch Times. Fox News was the first to report the story. Elon Musk retweeted a message from a Fox News reporter breaking the story.
Trump, the frontrunner in the GOP field, has spent weeks attacking DeSantis in Truth Social posts and ads on national television. The ads attack DeSantis for supporting a national sales tax while in Congress, among other issues. DeSantis has largely refrained from attacking Trump.
The announcement event will take place at 6 p.m. on Wednesday on Twitter Spaces. The Spaces feature allows for a large group of people to participate in a voice conversation. The feature’s current iteration does not allow for video.
In an average of polls maintained by RealClearPolitics, Trump held the lead on May 23 with 56.3 points. DeSantis trailed in a distant second with 19.4 points. Other major candidates include entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, and conservative talk show host Larry Elder.
The DeSantis announcement comes days on the heels of the official campaign launch by Scott. Trump, who has refrained from attacking candidates other than DeSantis, wished Scott “good luck” in a message on Truth Social. The message suggested that Trump views the growing field as a net negative for DeSantis.
“It is rapidly loading up with lots of people, and Tim is a big step up from Ron DeSanctimonious, who is totally unelectable. I got Opportunity Zones done with Tim, a big deal that has been highly successful,” Trump wrote.
A number of other Republicans are also entertaining bids, including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Vice President Mike Pence.
The choice of the launch medium for DeSantis is another twist in a tumultuous year for the media landscape. Weeks earlier, Fox News parted ways with Tucker Carlson, the most popular host on cable television. Carlson later said he plans to bring his show to Twitter.
After buying Twitter for $44 billion in October last year, Musk has worked to define it as an alternative to establishment news media. After taking over, The billionaire CEO handed internal Twitter files to independent journalists who then published their findings on Twitter.
Musk had previously suggested that he is leaning toward voting for DeSantis.
In an event hosted by The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Musk said that he would interview DeSantis as part of the launch announcement and use the Twitter platform to pull in questions from the audience.
“Yes, I will be interviewing Ron DeSantis and he has quite an announcement to make,” Musk said.
President Joe Biden is the presumptive Democratic candidate in 2024. Robert F. Kennedy, an attorney and vaccine safety activist, and Marianne Williamson, an author, both launched long-shot challenges to the incumbent.
News of the pending formal announcement by DeSantis arrived as the Florida legislature was yet to deliver a piece of legislation to the Florida governor’s desk which would allow him to run for president without resigning from the governor’s office.
Whether DeSantis would have to resign under the current statute is a point of contention, with some arguing that running for the Republican nomination does not mean he “qualifies” for the election, as described in the current law. The bill which will do away with the confusion, SB 7050, will become law with or without the governor’s signature 15 days after it is delivered to the governor’s desk.
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