Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has finally announced his 2024 presidential run via a Twitter spaces event with the platform’s CEO, Elon Musk.
“It will be the first time that something like this is happening on social media,” Musk said at a Wall Street Journal event on Tuesday. It certainly was a one-off: never before has a major candidate for the office of US president made their announcement in such stilted, glitchy and modestly viewed circumstances.
Crikey takes a look at some of the declared nominees in the expanding Republican field.
Ron DeSantis
DeSantis has established himself as the most likely Republican to beat Donald Trump to the nomination. He was reelected Florida governor last year by the largest margin in the state for 40 years.
He is, according to both friends and foes, highly intelligent, driven, hard-working and calculating. “He is Trump with a brain,” say his aides. Others note a distinct lack of personal charm and a tendency to be awkward and aloof. Indeed, of the event with Musk, The Atlantic wondered: “Who came up with the galaxy-brained idea of matching up two of the most socially awkward people in American public life for a spontaneous discussion on Twitter?”
DeSantis’ biggest gamble is his prolonged fight with Disney after its workforce pressured the corporation into criticising Florida law prohibiting public school teachers from discussing sexuality and gender identity in the classroom. DeSantis, as a champion of conservative values like free speech, the unfettered hand of the market, and job creation, has attempted to wrest oversight of the land belonging to a private company and threatened them with new regulations, taxes and even the possibility of constructing a prison nearby.
In response, Disney, expressing disgust at this big taxing anti-business rhetoric, has scrapped plans to build a new campus in central Florida that would have reportedly employed 2000 people. It’s quite the falling out — in 2009, DeSantis approved of Disney’s role in American life enough to choose it as his wedding venue.
Having become governor largely thanks to the former president’s endorsement, and taking on many of the MAGA preoccupations, the battle between DeSantis and Trump is likely to get messy.
Tim Scott
Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, declared his candidacy days before DeSantis. From South Carolina, Scott bills himself as the candidate “the far left fears the most”. He has received an uncharacteristically warm response from Trump, though a look at the former president’s full comments give an indication of why:
“Good luck to Senator Tim Scott in entering the Republican primary race,” Trump posted on his Truth Social website. “It is rapidly loading up with lots of people, and Tim is a big step up from Ron DeSanctimonious, who is totally unelectable.” Scott is an evangelical Christian who posits an optimistic “personal responsibility” narrative. He has around 2% support according to recent polls.
Nikki Haley
The former South Carolina governor and Trump’s former United Nations ambassador, Nikki Haley announced her challenge to her one-time boss — breaking a promise not to run that she had made two years earlier — in February. Haley was one of the many Republicans to veer from full-throated condemnation of Trump to active support between 2016 and 2017.
“I will not stop until we fight a man that chooses not to disavow the KKK. That is not a part of our party. That’s not who we want as president. We will not allow that in our country.” She said that in 2016, two months or so before accepting Trump’s nomination for UN ambassador.
Trump, again, was relatively cordial given her apparent disloyalty, perhaps thanks to recent polling that had shown Haley’s 11% support would be more likely to stymie DeSantis than himself.
Donald Trump
And, of course, there is Trump himself, still the favourite to gain the nomination — if he’s not in jail. Earlier this year, he faced the first criminal charges ever levelled at a former US president, an indictment stemming from a $130,000 hush-money payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential election campaign, plus an alleged 34 false business statements that Trump made to cover up other crimes.
At the arraignment, Trump was not subjected to the handcuffing and mugshot that would usually take place before a court appearance, an attempt to deny Trump the iconography this would provide his 2024 bid. Trump’s team mocked a mugshot up anyway and put it on a T-shirt to raise campaign funds.
Trump may be facing three more criminal charges, all more serious than this one: the Department of Justice is investigating the removal of government documents from the White House after he left office, which were taken to Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago. The department is also running investigations into his role in the riots of January 6 2021 and the wider efforts to overturn the 2020 election result.
How on earth is free speech a particularly conservative value? What absolute bloody nonsense. And DeSantis is no champion of it. He is presiding over a big clamp down on free speech in Florida, although he hides behind a facade by picking and choosing to defend some speech while suppressing others.
“Free speech?” This is the DeSantis who has organized a movement of book-banning throughout Florida? Who has declared a ‘woke agenda’ (read black or liberal) to be anathema to his rule?
Like all Right-wingers, he supports the freedom of people to do, say and think what the Republican Party / Coalition / Tories tell them to.
Maybe it’s meant to be “free speech” in big air quotes. As in, the kind of “free speech” that Conservatives champion ?
Trump versus De Santis…Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire!!! The (American) Presidential election process is a basket case. Their entire political system needs to be completely reformed.
Their entire country needs to be completely reformed.
Yep………..
The only thing wrong with America is that it’s full of Americans.
A cheap shot, neither original nor true.
Cheap shots are all that America warrants.
I never claimed ownership…………..
………nevertheless, it is indubitable.
After having lived there I know there are a huge number of Americans that are very nice people. Mind you none of the ones we knew were Republican supporters.
De Santis’s aides say
Not reassuring. And quite possibly these aides are missing the whole point, the quality in Trump that makes him so attractive to his 75 million or so supporters at the last election. ‘Trump with a brain’ might be as much an irreconcilable contradiction as a law-abiding criminal.
Much of the malaise in US politics, and elsewhere, arises from the domination of parties that have a process for selecting candidates that can be easily taken over by fanatics. By the time the general population gets to vote all the potentially decent candidates in those parties have been eliminated and replaced by grubs and lunatics. Incumbents are likewise forced to either conform to the will of the crazies or else be deselected; see Liz Cheney for example.
Trump with a brain?…………….
I’d like to see the autopsy results verifying that.
Perhaps a system of mandatory autopsies for all presidential candidates so the results can inform voters before the election?
A sort of reverse Maya process you mean?……………..
Now there’s a thought to conjure with.
I can certainly see there would be a lot of upside………….
They also seem to elect candidates that can be easily bought by big business. Money and corruption go hand in hand in politics, especially American politics, which inevitably leaves ordinary American citizens (if indeed they’re able to vote) having to decide between the lesser of two evils.
There is some conflict between the two systems – selecting for service to big business, and selecting for fanaticism. The former is the older way of doing things, and big business is not that happy that often these days unbiddable lunatics are displacing some of their own.
That implies Australia is different and our pollies haven’t been bought by miners, property developers, bankers, graziers, foreign organised crime and retailers interested in as much immigration as they can import cheap products from China to sell to. Hardly normal.
Apparently, up close, he has the personality, social skills and charisma of a tin of tuna fish.
Trump’s idea of a borderwall was inadequate – it should have been extended along the northern border with Canada and on the east & west coasts, with secure joins at the corners.
The rest of the world would be eager to contribute to the immense cost if it included a roof so that the interior could be flooded with sea water.
Now the Republicans have the only choice they are required to make……………..
Dumb or Dumber?
My late uncle was a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry and was often asked to be an expert witness in patent matters. Back in the 70s he said that the US was the most corrupt place he ever set foot in and that included the old USSR. The idea that de Santis (whose covidiocy caused thousands oif Floridians to die neeedlessly) or Trump are in any way fit to lead a nation is sickening. A crook and a bigot. Florida has had one school district ban a Mem Fox book. In a land where murder happens at 22 times the rate in the EU, where there are 60 million more guns than people, they see Mem Fox’s elderly witch as a threat!
Some wise critic once said if you show a breast on network TV that would be R rating, if you shot the owner of the breast that would be G. A failed state in so many ways.
At least in the USSR you got what you paid for…………………….
……..in America there is always the chance you will get gazumped by a better offer.
Why do all these RW “leaders” all have such dull, soulless eyes?
Here’s a clue………….
So does Putin.
So does Erdogan.
So does Bolsonaro.
So did Josef Mengele………………….