MIAMI – After his Federal Election Commission filing on Wednesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced his bid to become the 2024 Republican presidential candidate and the next president of the United States on social media.
DeSantis delivered statements during a glitchy Twitter Spaces event ahead of an upcoming big donors’ meeting at the Four Seasons Hotel in Miami’s Brickell neighborhood.
“The servers are straining somewhat,” Elon Musk said, as the audio stream kept crashing at the beginning of the audio-only event.
Soon after, President Joe Biden tweeted, “This link works.” He added a picture of his 2024 campaign and a link to his donation page.
Once the audio was streaming, DeSantis said he will continue “replacing the woke mind virus” and introduced himself as a “Navy veteran, an Iraq War veteran” and as “a blue-collar kid” from the Tampa Bay area. DeSantis was born in Jacksonville and grew up in the Gulf Coast’s city of Dunedin.
Related link: LISTEN to DeSantis’s initial official announcement
DeSantis also criticized Biden’s economic measures as “inflationary” and he also made a stance in support of Bitcoin by saying he would put a stop to regulating the digital currency and would stand against a central bank digital currency if he was elected president.
“The current regime, clearly, they have it out for Bitcoin, and if it continues for another four years, they will probably end up killing it,” DeSantis said.
At 44 years old, the 46th governor of Florida has established himself as a cultural conservative who stands behind divisive far-right policies on race, gender, and abortion. He has alarmed civil rights organizations and advocates of undocumented migrants and the LGBTQ+ community.
“We will never surrender to the woke mob,” DeSantis said.
Related link: LISTEN to DeSantis’s response to NAACP travel advisory
DeSantis first got national attention amid his opposition to some of the measures that epidemiologists were recommending to keep COVID-19 from spreading. Data shows COVID-19 was the cause of death for 86,000 people in Florida during the pandemic.
DeSantis’s stance against requiring the use of face masks in public schools after the lockdown during the pandemic was especially controversial in Broward and Miami-Dade counties.
“It was very, very lonely in a lot of those decisions,” DeSantis said.
Related link: LISTEN to DeSantis talk about pandemic
Dr. Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya, an Indian American professor of medicine, economics, and health research policy at Stanford University, was among the event’s six guests. He praised DeSantis for opposing lockdowns during the pandemic and denounced YouTube for banning a video of their roundtable discussion on the subject.
DeSantis said he agreed with Bhattacharya about the need for “an overhaul” of federal public health agencies such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and he announced that he was soon going to sign a Florida bill into law to address censorship on digital platforms.
Related link: LISTEN to Bhattacharya-DeSantis exchange
DeSantis also addressed his feud with Walt Disney Co. and he admitted the multinational’s opposition to his Parental Rights in Education law, which critics worldwide now know as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, was what started it.
“Nobody probably has made Disney more money than me because they were open during COVID,” DeSantis said about the parks’ ability to stay open during the pandemic in Florida and not in California.
Related link: LISTEN to DeSantis discuss feud with Disney
Dana Lynn Loesch, a former spokesperson for the National Rifle Association, was also an event guest and she also praised DeSantis. Florida Republican lawmakers helped DeSantis to allow Floridians to be able to carry concealed guns without a permit.
Musk allowed David Sacks, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist who has publicly supported DeSantis’s run for president, to host the Twitter Spaces event, which ended with some 300,000 listeners, according to the app’s indicator.
Related link: LISTEN to DeSantis criticize ‘legacy media’
The other guests included Christopher F. Rufo, the conservative activist from California behind the opposition to critical race theory, and Riley Gaines, a swimmer from Tennessee who advocates against trans athlete participation.
Steve Deace, Iowa-based conservative media radio host; and Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican politician from Kentucky and Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineer and entrepreneur, also joined the discussion.
Related story: DeSantis mentions ‘The Hill We Climb’ controversy at Miami-Dade County Public Schools
Aside from former President Donald Trump, the crowded Republican primary also includes Sen. Tim Scott, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.
DeSantis tweets
I’m running for president to lead our Great American Comeback. pic.twitter.com/YmkWkLaVDg
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) May 24, 2023
Biden tweets
This link works: https://t.co/9PzIJkseYI
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 24, 2023
Trump’s supporters tweet
Other topics DeSantis discussed
Watch the 11 p.m. report
Watch afternoon reports
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Watch This Week In South Florida (May 21 episode)
Live coverage of the glitchy event on FacebookLive
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