A disservice to Ron DeSantis from Elon Musk
- ukr
- rus
- “The beginning of the DeSantis campaign is overshadowed by horrific technical malfunctions” (Politico);
- “An Uncomfortable Silence: DeSantis' Twitter Bet Failed” (New York Times).
< /ul> watch online IMPACT ON THE POLYCLINIC IN DNEPR JUDGE KNOWED UP THE NATIONAL GUARD MAN IN KIEV 24 Channel Loudspeakers A disservice to Ron DeSantis from Elon Musk A disservice to Ron DeSantis from Ilona Mask19:04, May 26Read Ukrainian newsAuthor of the publication
Alexander Chupac
The Florida Governor's presidential campaign began with a failed Twitter broadcast. Why this will not affect his chances – read the author's column for the Channel 24 website.
Overrated disaster
The joining of Ron DeSantis to the presidential race was being prepared for more than half a year. As soon as the governor was re-elected by a wide margin for a second term as head of the state of Florida, he noticeably changed his rhetoric from regional to national.
In his speeches, criticism of the Joe Biden administration became more frequent on many issues: border security, inflation, educational policy and the like. Only one thing was missing: an official announcement of the intention to take the place of the 80-year-old president himself in the White House.
The day finally arrived on May 24th. Unexpectedly for everyone, DeSantis decided not to hold the traditional ceremony with a stage and a large crowd of fans. He agreed with the owner of the social network Twitter Elon Musk to organize an online broadcast. However, everything suddenly went wrong: when more than half a million viewers joined the platform at the same time, it could not stand it. It took several tens of minutes to restore the audio stream.
Popular American media instantly published materials about the “catastrophic” nature of what happened. For example:
Elon Musk, who has recently been mercilessly criticized in the press for changing the policy of the social network, also got it.
< p>Don't overestimate the impact of one failed show on the entire DeSantis campaign, though. Of course, the governor would like everything to go without delays and technical problems. When voters all over the country turn on the broadcast at a certain time and nothing happens there, it definitely has a negative impact. However, since then, DeSantis has gone through two more planned events without any problems: a television broadcast on Fox News and a radio broadcast on The Mark Levin Show.
The video with the official announcement of the launch of his campaign already had more than 20 million views as of Friday morning.
The fight is just beginning
However, the most important indicator of a candidate's success is the collection of contributions to finance the election campaign. Within the first 24 hours of the announcement, DeSantis raised $8.2 million. For example, Joe Biden had 6.3 million in the same period in 2019, and it took Donald Trump six weeks last year to raise 9.5 million.
Significant contributions to DeSantis confirm the preliminary assumption of American observers: most voters want to see a classic conservative at the head of the Republican Party, who has shown his ability to win in difficult conditions (until recently, the state of Florida was a difficult challenge for any politician).
According to various estimates, Donald Trump, despite the current significant advantage in the polls, has a nuclear electorate of 20-30% of Republicans. Approximately the same number clearly does not support it, and the rest – fluctuate. It is for the latter that a serious struggle will unfold, and the official announcement of DeSantis is the first step towards winning the sympathy of these voters.
A much more important event, which will have a far-reaching impact on the presidential ambitions of all contenders, will be the first round of debates due in August. Probably, there we will see whether DeSantis can withstand a direct confrontation with Donald Trump, because today politicians exchanged only correspondence criticism.
Recall that in 2015-2016 Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and other Republicans were completely unprepared for meetings with Trump, who literally ridiculed them in front of the whole country.
It is at the debate that we will hear direct questions to the Republican candidates about Ukraine. There we will find out which position DeSantis finally chose: populist isolationism aimed at dragging Trump voters or a healthy policy of support for Kiev, which is in the US national interest.
