Donald Trump‘s major rival for the Republican party ticket, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, reportedly announced he is running for U.S. president Wednesday, March 24.
Ron DeSantis’s long-awaited entry into the 2024 race for the White House was hit by technical glitches after a Twitter livestream malfunctioned.
It meant the Florida governor’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination got under way 20 minutes late.
He went on to use the event to champion his conservative credentials, his anti-lockdown stance and education reforms.
‘I am running for president of the United States to lead our great American comeback,’ he said.
By the time Wednesday evening’s Twitter talk had begun in earnest, hundreds of thousands of Twitter users had left the platform.
Since Elon Musk took the reins at Twitter in October, he has laid off thousands of employees, including engineers responsible for the site’s operations and technical troubleshooting.
Mr DeSantis’s team worked quickly to spin the technical stumbles, writing on Twitter that the announcement had broken ‘the internet with so much excitement’, and posting a link to the campaign website.
His press secretary Bryan Griffin claimed the online event had raised $1m (£808,000) in an hour.
The announcement could be a significant boost for DeSantis by giving him an introduction to, and credibility with, Musk’s massive following — including his 140 million Twitter followers.
At one point, the Twitter event drew more than 600,000 listeners, according to Reuters news agency figures, but by its conclusion, there were fewer than 300,000.
The BBC’s interview with Elon Musk last month drew more than three million listeners on Twitter Spaces.
Once under way, Mr DeSantis turned the conversation to his conservative credentials, touting his handling of the Covid-19 crisis in his state – an anti-lockdown approach applauded by many Republicans.
He defended his reforms of Florida‘s education system, saying his state ‘chose facts over fear, education over indoctrination, law and order over rioting and disorder’.
DeSantis will begin visiting several early states after Memorial Day.
