“Ron DeSantis Announces Presidential Candidacy on Twitter Despite Technical Difficulties”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (44) is ridiculed after a challenging start to the election campaign on Thursday night.

On Wednesday, it was official: DeSantis is running as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate for the 2024 election.

– I am standing as a presidential candidate to lead our great American comeback, he says in one video on Twitter night to Thursday Norwegian time.

Twitter is also the place where last night he made his first official appearance as a presidential candidate – in a live conversation with Twitter CEO Elon Musk.

Delays and “elevator music”

However, the event, which was broadcast live on Twitter, did not go quite as planned:

• The broadcast was initially eight minutes late, before it was characterized by a number of technical challenges.
• At the start of the event, it all seemed to be too much for Twitter, which crashed repeatedly, writes the New York Times. – Right now we are listening to what sounds like elevator music, wrote BBCs livereporter.
• 20 minutes into the live broadcast, DeSantis still hadn’t said a word. What could be heard were Twitter employees trying to apologize for the situation. – We have so many here that we kind of melt the servers, which is a good sign, says David Sacks, who led the conversation.
• According to Guardian Twitter eventually had to set up a new live broadcast. After about 30 minutes, the governor was finally able to take the microphone and declare that he is running for office. By then, just under half of the around 500,000 listeners had disappeared, writes ABC News.

DeSantis is Donald Trump’s main competitor to become the Republicans’ final candidate for the presidential job.

Ridiculed by Biden

Neither rivals from the Republican or Democratic parties have let the chance to ridicule the new presidential candidate slip away after the Twitter trouble on Thursday night.

– This link works, writes President Joe Biden and posts a link to his own election campaign.

– Errors, technological problems. Uncomfortable silence. A completely failed launch. And that’s just the candidate,” says a spokesperson for rival Donald Trump in a statement reproduced by ABC.

Fox News, where DeSantis will be interviewed later Thursday night, also took a stab at Twitter:

– Do you actually want to see and hear Ron DeSantis? Turn on Fox News at 8pm tonight, they write in a big red banner on theirs websites.

Behind Trump in the polls

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis belongs to the right wing among the Republicans and is politically close to former President Donald Trump, writes NTB. He and Trump have nevertheless disagreed on several major value issues, including abortion, where DeSantis has had to implement strong austerity measures.

Polls have so far shown that DeSantis is far behind Trump in support among Republican voters.

Read more about DeSantis here: The Republicans’ new star

However, during the Twitter conversation with Musk, he went down the throat of the incumbent US President Joe Biden, who belongs to the Democratic Party. Among other things, he criticized the situation at the US border with Mexico, where a change in the law has recently led to chaos and uncertainty.

– We know that our country is going in the wrong direction. We see it with our eyes and we feel it on our bodies, he said, among other things, and claimed that Biden lacks the vigor needed to lead the United States.

DeSantis also accused Biden of allowing himself to be led by “wokewokeA term that is most often used in connection with political correctness. It was originally considered a positive characteristic, but has recently taken on a negative connotation. There have been several cases where the political right uses the term as a way to trivialize opponents of opinion.» movement. The governor has received praise from the right wing of the party for having tightened universities’ and schools’ opportunities to promote diversity, equality and inclusion, writes NTB.