Washington The campaign for the man who wants to be President of the United States began with a feedback loop. A squeak, a sonic noise, then nothing for a long time. More than 500,000 users flocked to the Twitter Spaces audio platform Wednesday night to follow Republican Ron DeSantis’ campaign launch.
The platform collapsed before the show could start. After the diagnosis of a server crash, another Twitter room continued, but the damage had already been done: “Amateur Hour” and “Disaster” headlined Fox News, the largest US cable broadcaster. When DeSantis was added to Fox News that same evening, he was first mocked: “Well, we don’t break down, not even with an audience of millions,” blasphemed moderator Trey Gowdy.
The start of a US presidential campaign has probably never been so chaotic. However, the botched Twitter experiment was just part of DeSantis’ attempt to shake up the Republican field.
Ex-President Donald Trump is running again for the highest office and is the favorite of his party in polls. As things stand now, Trump would probably have the best chance of being nominated again for the Republican nomination. Then he would run against Joe Biden in November 2024 – as he did in the 2020 elections. DeSantis wants to prevent this scenario and become a candidate himself.
After the start of his election campaign, two questions came to mind: Why is he doing what he is doing – and can he be successful with it?
The conversation with Musk on Twitter wasn’t very engaging when it finally started. DeSantis delivered a monologue about why he thinks books about transgender children and youth are dangerous in schools. When he was done, presenter David Sacks, a major Republican donor and Musk confidante, said, “That’s great.” At some point, all participants were talking about Bitcoin.
The major issues of inflation, taxes, immigration and health were only mentioned marginally. Musk said: “Twitter was expensive, but freedom of expression is priceless”, otherwise he was hardly heard from himself.
Outside of the chat room, politics continued: Exactly one year ago, 19 children were shot dead in a mass shooting at a school in the Texas city of Uvalde. And in the debt dispute, the rating agency Fitch threatened on Wednesday to withdraw the top rating AAA from the United States. Both events played no role for Musk and DeSantis.
“We don’t want to end up like Germany”
DeSantis made a much more professional impression on Fox News. Here the presidential candidate showed a determined, aggressive side that one often sees in his performances. “Joe Biden is doing nothing to save this country,” DeSantis raged on Fox News, promising that as president he would finish building Donald Trump’s unfinished refugee wall.
“No one has the right to come to our country without permission. Immigration needs to benefit our country, and if someone can’t do that, they can’t come here,” DeSantis said.
He dodged the question of whether the US should provide financial support to Ukraine. “I want an agreement, I want peace. I don’t want the US to ever get involved with our troops in a war with Russia or Ukraine.”
The governor made it clear that less relaxed times were imminent for the transatlantic relationship under DeSantis: “We want energy independence,” said the Republican and criticized Biden’s subsidies for green tech. “We don’t want to end up like Germany. They don’t have a reasonable power supply there and energy prices are climbing.”
DeSantis still doesn’t seem to be able to decide whether, as a presidential candidate, he will target America’s culture wars, or economic issues, or both. His common thread is what he calls the “War on Wokism”. DeSantis called left-wing identity politics “the burning dustbin of wokism” and “a virus for the brain”.
The term “woke” means that people are aware of prejudices such as racism or sexism. In public discourse, “wokism” is now used more as a swear word or as a derisive word. Leftist and progressive actors, critics say, overdo it with tolerance and anti-discrimination efforts and impose their worldview on society as a whole.
DeSantis recently moved his state of Florida to the right. DeSantis’ government recently enacted a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, something only a handful of states have gone as far as to date. Florida also banned gender reassignment surgery for people under the age of 18 and relaxed gun laws.
In 2022, he banned discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in elementary schools, and therefore took on Disney when the company criticized the law. Disney has since sued the governor for alleged business damage.
The Twitter CEO also commented on the Twitter space.
(Photo: AP)
DeSantis’ critique of socially responsible investing, known in business jargon as environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing, has received a lot of attention on Twitter and Fox News.
These are all issues that DeSantis is likely to excite many US Republicans about, but on which he would have little political influence as president. In an interview with Fox News, he admitted that the Disney case was “very special” and that as president he could not take action against individual companies. Similarly with education and abortion, the laws on these are mostly in the hands of the US states.
Late revenge on the corona protection measures
No other topic is as important to DeSantis as the processing of Covid-19. The pandemic may be over, but it will play a role in the 2024 US election campaign – as many Republicans, as well as parts of the Democratic camp, are retrospectively frustrated by mask mandates, lockdowns and vaccination requirements.
DeSantis links his criticism of the protective measures with attacks on political institutions: The disease control agency CDC, for example, must be “cleaned”, DeSantis demanded in the Twitter space, and lockdowns are nothing more than “authoritarianism”. This form of anti-elite criticism is known from Trump and is now being continued by DeSantis.
Still, the 44-year-old wants to establish himself as a younger, more educated, reliable alternative to Trump — while also attracting a section of the Republican base who might doubt Trump. “Government is not entertainment,” DeSantis told Trump.
Companions report that DeSantis only goes with a small circle of advisers, most notably his wife Casey, a former television host and public relations professional. The team, it is said in DeSantis’ environment, is not very experienced with the big stage of the presidential elections, a lot is still improvised.
At the end of a mixed evening, DeSantis’ people tried to turn the technical glitches into positive ones. “He literally rocked the internet,” his campaign said. “The White House is next.”
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