Analysis | Ron DeSantis’s pitches — and Elon Musk’s glitches — make for a wild presidential bid launch

MIAMI—“It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.”

Those are the words that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will have to live by after the epic launch of his campaign for the White House in 2024.

Announced on Twitter Spaces, a newish and poorly known part of the social media platform, the launch was initially marred by an epic glitch that was nervously laughed off by hosts Elon Musk and pal David Sacks, a DeSantis donor, who suggested that “we melted the internet.”

Fifteen minutes later, when the bugs were cleared, it descended into an epic rant filled with right-wing grievances — about COVID-19, about “the woke mob,” about illegal immigration and the evils of the traditional media.

Billed as a “first in the history of social media,” it was true to Twitter form — a bitter, insular and partisan display. Less an open conversation than a group of like-minded people bellowing into one another’s echo chamber.

Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur who reportedly voted for President Joe Biden but has criticized pandemic health restrictions and other progressive causes, was in his element as co-host.

His primary interest seemed to be the promotion of his cash-strapped and oft-criticized company. While he did tout his own contribution to the culture wars and seemed generally favourable to his guest, he managed to hover just above the partisan fray of the event, and extended an invitation to any politician of any stripe who wanted to follow in DeSantis’s shaky footsteps.

But for DeSantis, who had a major chance to introduce himself to the country and make a first impression on the voters he will need to win, it seemed like a swing and a miss.

The baseball terminology is intentional.

Before he was the great Republican hope for those who can’t fathom Donald Trump’s return, DeSantis was a blue-collar kid with something of an all-American pedigree.

He played in the Little League World Series as a boy, went on a baseball scholarship to Yale, then studied law at Harvard.

He served in the navy, spent time in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay. He married a former television reporter at Disney World and the couple have three kids.

But all this took a back seat Wednesday to DeSantis’s political persona as a culture warrior —one who claimed to “know instinctively what normal people think” and committed to battling “the woke mind virus” run amok in the United States.

Part of this rhetoric seems to be inescapable in the country at the moment.

America is funding and supplying the bulk of Ukraine’s effort to fend of Russia’s invaders. Democrats and Republicans are locked in negotiations over the country’s debt ceiling which, if not resolved, could send the America and the world into a financial tailspin. It is already in a match of geopolitical Chinese checkers.

But leading the news across this country is Target’s decision to pull some items from its LGBTQ+ Pride collection of clothing from stores, in response to threats and criticism.

The retailer’s decision follows controversy about a Bud Light beer commercial featuring a transgender female influencer Dylan Mulvaney that sparked a boycott. Adidas could be next, with an ad for a Pride swimsuit worn by a transgender model drawing the ire of the American right wing.

And DeSantis has been on the leading edge of this fight in Florida, where he has signed laws to prevent transgender women from playing on female sports teams, to stop them from using female washroom facilities or to ban the use of preferred pronouns in schools.

He has put restrictions on the teaching of sex education and Black history.

At the same time, he has eased gun laws and lowered the legal threshold for sentencing criminals to death.

It has been said of DeSantis that he aims to “Make America Florida.”

It’s a hat-tip to the man DeSantis will have to wrest the Republican nomination from — fellow Floridian Trump — who has been promising to return the United States to its fabled state of former glory since he was first elected in 2016.

DeSantis’s pitch to Republican voters who might be weighing him against Trump is that he is capable of delivering the victory that eluded Trump in 2020.

Trump himself clings to the falsehood that the presidency was based on fraudulent results and thus stolen from him.

While many other Republicans share that view, DeSantis clearly called it as a loss — something that draws a line in the Republican sand.

“There is no substitute for victory. We must end the culture of losing that has infected the Republican Party in recent years,” he said.

“If you nominate me, you can set your clock to January 5, 2025, at high noon because, on the west side of the U.S. Capitol, I will be taking the oath of office as the 47th president of the United States. No excuses. I will get the job done.”

But more than simply winning, DeSantis is drawing on his record in Florida to indicate that he is ready — eager, even — to go much further and sow more division than even Trump might have envisaged on his wildest days in the White House.

After months of playing coy about his presidential ambitions, of ducking the questions about his plans, DeSantis is finally being crystal clear about what it might mean to “Make America Florida.”

“When you try some new things … It’s adventurous,” said Musk.

He was referring to the malfunctioning of his online pulpit, but he could have easily been referring to DeSantis’s pitch to voters, who must now decide if what the Florida governor is offering is a promise or a threat.

Allan Woods is a Montreal-based staff reporter for the Star. He covers global and national affairs. Follow him on Twitter: @WoodsAllan

SHARE: