Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis is tipped to take the path less trodden by announcing his well-funded 2024 presidential campaign in a talk on Wednesday evening with Twitter owner Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces, a live audio component of the platform.
According to media reports, the Twitter talk between DeSantis and Musk is part of a multiday rollout for the Republican, who is also expected to file formal paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday to make his bid official.
The 6 pm ET event will take place on Twitter Spaces, people familiar with the matter told NBC News which was one of the first media outlets to report on plans for the Twitter Spaces talk.
Musk, speaking at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit in London, said he wasn’t planning to endorse any particular candidate but is interested in using Twitter as a kind of public town square.
In 2014, Musk described himself as "half Democrat, half Republican" and "I'm somewhere in the middle, socially liberal and fiscally conservative." In 2022, his public political stances took a sharp rightward turn as he declared his support for the Republican Party, aligned himself with far-right activists on Twitter, disparaged transgender rights, and pledged to save civilization from the “woke mind virus,” according to the Independent.
Musk also tweeted last year that he was leaning toward supporting DeSantis as a potential candidate for the 2024 White House race.
Be that as it may, Musk said on Tuesday that Twitter aims to be “a place where all voices are heard and where there’s the kind of dynamic interaction that you don’t really see anywhere else.”
Meanwile, The New York Times reported that backed by a Super Pac and its $200 million budget, DeSantis’s campaign will deploy thousands of workers to knock on doors in early Republican primary voting states.
According to the newspaper, the plan is for campaign workers to visit the doors of every potential DeSantis voter in South Carolina, Nevada and New Hampshire “at least four times, and five times in Iowa,” whose caucuses typically kick off the Republican nomination process.
Curiously, no Florida politician has ever been elected president. It is not for the lack of trying, as several powerful politicians have made a strong bid for the White House from the electoral powerhouse state which has 22 million people. The US Sunshine State, nicknamed “The Gunshine State” has some of the most relaxed gun laws in the US. By some counts, Florida leads the nation in gun ownership, with about 8% percent of the population licensed to carry a concealed weapon.
Floridians are now able to carry concealed guns without a permit under a bill DeSantis signed in April, giving the Republican governor another legislative victory as he makes his White House bid.
Contact the author Uttara Choudhury at uttara@proactiveinvestors.com
Follow her on Twitter: @UttaraProactive