Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ long-awaited entry into next year’s US presidential campaign descended into a fiasco on Wednesday as the opening of the live Twitter event intended to announce his candidacy was derailed by glitches.
The conversation repeatedly crashed as the platform’s servers were apparently overwhelmed, and many of the more than 400,000 users hoping to listen missed the 44-year-old conservative throwing down the gauntlet to Republican primary front-runner and former US president Donald Trump.
DeSantis began speaking after almost half an hour of confusion and chaos — although what should have been an exultant launch had been overshadowed by the time he made his case for the Republican nomination.
Photo: AFP
“I am running for president of the United States to lead our great American comeback,” he told listeners, although tens of thousands had abandoned Twitter by that point.
As the Web site struggled to get the event back on track, its owner Elon Musk, performing hosting duties, could be heard saying that the “massive number of people online” had caused the servers to begin “straining somewhat.”
While organizers sought to highlight the event’s popularity — the DeSantis camp said that it had raised US$1 million online in one hour.
US President Joe Biden’s team was quick to capitalize on the glitches, posting on Twitter a link to a fundraising page, along with the message: “This link works.”
“My Red Button is bigger, better, stronger, and is working,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, in a reference to a war of words he once had with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
The conversation went on for more than one hour, but technical problems persisted — a setback mocked as encapsulating the downward turn the governor’s image has taken of late.
Long viewed as the most formidable challenger to twice-impeached Trump, DeSantis boasts deep midwestern roots, a large campaign fund, a list of ultra-conservative legislative wins and an unblemished record of election victories.
While Trump has dominated headlines with his legal woes, DeSantis has presented himself as the tip of the spear in the struggle of ordinary Americans against progressive values he sees as authoritarian and divisive.
The governor gave an interview on conservative television network Fox News after the Twitter event, and tried to reclaim his reputation for order and competence.
“If you nominate me, I pledge to you that on January 20, 2025, at high noon, I’ll be the guy on the west side of the Capitol with the left hand on the Bible and the right hand in the air, taking the oath of office as the 47th president of the United States,” he said.
“No more excuses — we’ve got to get this one done,” he said.
DeSantis has used his position as Florida’s governor to stack up a litany of conservative accomplishments, signing off on about 80 state laws targeting “woke indoctrination” in schools and other public institutions.
They include a ban on discussing gender identity and sexual orientation in schools, a block on funding efforts to promote diversity at public universities and one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country.
“The woke mind virus is basically a form of cultural Marxism. At the end of the day, it’s an attack on the truth, and because it’s a war on truth, I think we have no choice but to wage a war on woke,” he told Fox News.
Without explicitly criticizing Trump, the governor used the event to draw a distinction between his record of getting policy initiatives into the statute books and the former president’s reputation for legislative inertia and chaos in his personal and professional life.
However, DeSantis lacks the front-runner’s national profile, and the launch comes with his ratings in decline, as a number of policy missteps have prompted disquiet about his readiness to take on Trump.
He faces the task of closing an enormous polling gap, with Trump posting a lead of about 40 percentage points, despite being indicted on felony financial charges and being found liable for sexual abuse in a New York civil trial.
The Trump and DeSantis camps have been jostling to secure endorsements from state lawmakers while, at the national level, Florida’s congressional delegation has broken heavily for Trump.
However, DeSantis is seen as lacking the natural charm needed to peel away some of the 14 million voters who backed Trump in the last Republican primary, in 2016.
Trump has not posted on Twitter since his two-year ban over the 2021 US Capitol riot ended in November, but has been using his own social network to attack DeSantis almost daily.
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
DIALOGUE: US president-elect Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform confirmed that he had spoken with Xi, saying ‘the call was a very good one’ for the US and China US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) discussed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call on Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows to impose tariffs and other measures on the US’ biggest rival. Despite that, Xi congratulated Trump on his second term and pushed for improved ties, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The call came the same day that the US Supreme Court backed a law banning TikTok unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. “We both attach great importance to interaction, hope for
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
RELEASE: The move follows Washington’s removal of Havana from its list of terrorism sponsors. Most of the inmates were arrested for taking part in anti-government protests Cuba has freed 127 prisoners, including opposition leader Jose Daniel Ferrer, in a landmark deal with departing US President Joe Biden that has led to emotional reunions across the communist island. Ferrer, 54, is the most high-profile of the prisoners that Cuba began freeing on Wednesday after Biden agreed to remove the country from Washington’s list of terrorism sponsors — part of an eleventh-hour bid to cement his legacy before handing power on Monday to US president-elect Donald Trump. “Thank God we have him home,” Nelva Ortega said of her husband, Ferrer, who has been in and out of prison for the
RSS