Five takeaways from a Rocky 2024 debut
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ glitch-marred Twitter debut in 2024 distracted from his chance to present himself as a serious contender to take down former President Donald J. Trump.
It was a much-anticipated moment for Florida’s governor to reset after months of polling declines, which made Wednesday’s painfully long 20-plus minute Twitter outage all the more disappointing for his supporters.
Despite all the media coverage of the Twitter fiasco — The Daily Mail called it a “De-Saster,” Fox News a “disaster,” Breitbart News a “DeBacle” — Mr. DeSantis later seemed to have made his way onto the familiar airwaves from Fox News, a much more traditional — and effective — method of communicating with primary voters. His appearance there marked the first time he laid out a substantive argument for what a DeSantis presidency would look like.
Still, it was an evening that his team would like to leave behind. And it highlighted both Mr. DeSantis’ potential successes as a candidate, but also a campaign that is still going on as he comes under intense attack from a dominant Republican frontrunner.
Here are five takeaways.
Taking risks on Twitter backfired
The delay was longer than some campaign speeches.
For more than 25 minutes, Twitter squeaked through what should have been Mr. DeSantis’ grand statement of his 2024 candidacy, with long stretches of dead air punctuated by frantic murmurs from the microphone before pulling the plug and starting over.
A presidential announcement is the rarest opportunity. It is the moment when a candidate can draw all the attention to himself and his vision. Instead, Mr. DeSantis almost as a panelist at his own event, sharing the stage with Elon Musk and his malfunctioning social media site.
Fox News at one point put up a banner on its website with a picture of Mr. Musk, not Mr. DeSantis. “Do you really want to see and hear Ron DeSantis?” read a breaking news alert on the site. “Tune in to Fox News.”
Even beforehand, the decision to launch his campaign on Twitter with Mr. Musk to begin with received mixed reviews. It was innovative, yes – and a chance to reach a potentially huge online audience – but also risky.
The technically contested result obscured some of Mr. DeSantis’ arguments and undermined him from listeners and potential donors. For a candidate whose promise of ability is a Republican selling point, it was a less than ideal first impression. Mr. Trump and President Biden both mocked the rollout mercilessly.
His aides said Mr. DeSantis raised $1 million in an hour, a significant amount but far from the record for a presidential kickoff, with no details on how many individual donors made small contributions.
Mr Biden’s campaign also tried to make money by buying Google ads to display Biden donation pages to people who search for terms like “DeSantis disaster” and “DeSantis flop.”
The candidate of educated rightists
The DeSantis-Musk discussion on Twitter sometimes veered into a dead end of the hyper-online right.
Here’s a taste of the very ideological and shaky message Mr. DeSantis delivered:
“Some problems with the university and the ideological trap — that didn’t happen by accident, you can trace it all the way back to the accreditation cartels. Well guess what? Becoming an accreditor, how do you do that? You must be approved by the US Department of Education. So we’re going to have alternative accreditation regimes where instead of saying, “You’re only accredited if you do DEI,” get an accreditor saying, “We don’t accredit you if you do DEI.” want a color-blind, merit-based accreditation scheme.’”
Have it?
Mr. DeSantis repeatedly emphasized his working-class roots. But it has long been clear that Mr. DeSantis ranks much better among Republicans with a college degree than among those without a college degree, who strongly favor Mr. Trump and make up the Republican Party’s increasingly nationwide base. And his campaign launch night showed why.
The conversation degenerated into complaints about the horrors of The Atlantic and Vanity Fair magazines and into discussions about cryptocurrencies and the “de-banking” of “politically incorrect companies”.
Later, in his interview with Trey Gowdy on Fox News, Mr. DeSantis abbreviations – ESG (environmental, social and governance investing) was just one – without explaining what they meant.
DeSantis is ready to hit Trump – only indirectly
Mr. DeSantis made it clear on Wednesday that he is not yet ready to punch Mr. Trump, but he indicated where he will aim once he does.
He went through the Twitter Spaces session and two interviews — one on Fox News with Mr. Gowdy, his former congressional colleague, and the other on the radio with conservative host Mark Levin — without saying Mr. Trump’s name. (The word came out of his mouth at one point: “Merit should trump identity politics,” the governor said during the Twitter conversation.)
But his attempts to contrast himself with the nameless were frequent.
Mr DeSantis said on Fox News that the reason Mr Biden was able to get away with “shenanigans” on the southern border was because there was no wall protecting him. Mr. DeSantis pledged to build a “full” border wall — a rebuke to Mr. Trump’s failure to fulfill that signature pledge.
DeSantis also previewed one line of attack on which he expects to focus his campaign: Mr. Trump’s first-term staff appointments.
Mr. DeSantis blamed the Federal Reserve — Jerome H. Powell was appointed chairman of the Fed by Mr. Trump — for worsening inflation. And he said he would fire the FBI Director, Christopher A. Wray, another Trump appointee, on Day 1. (A senior adviser to Trump noted on Twitter that Mr. DeSantis publicly supported Mr. Wray’s selection at the time.)
Mr. DeSantis took his sharpest jab at Mr. Trump in the final moments with Mr. Gowdy, who asked him what he would say to candidates who may not want to debate. It was a clear reference to Mr. Trump, who has indicated that he may skip one or both of the first Republican debates. Mr. DeSantis, who needs the debates to have breakaway moments, called for people to participate.
“No one is entitled to anything in this world, Trey, you have to earn it,” Mr. DeSantis said. “That’s exactly what I intend to do, and I think the debates are a big part of the process.”
DeSantis made his plea like a Chinese hawk
Mr. DeSantis previewed his tough policy of confronting the Chinese Communist Party. While Mr. Trump focused largely on the trade dimension of the relationship during his presidency, Mr. DeSantis spoke more broadly about countering China’s influence, territorial expansion and military ambitions.
On Fox News, Mr. DeSantis called for a 21st century version of the Monroe Doctrine to counter China’s influence in Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine, established by President James Monroe in the early 1800s, warned European nations not to colonize America’s backyard.
DeSantis also said the US needed to form stronger partnerships with India, Australia and other allies to counter China’s expansion in the Pacific. And he called for the reshoring of critical manufacturing, saying the US was too closely intertwined with China economically.
His remarks indicated that Mr. DeSantis would be much more aggressive against China as president than Mr. Trump was in his first term. Trump spent the first three years of his presidency mostly averting his gaze from China’s military expansionism and human rights violations, wanting a trade deal with Beijing. Mr. DeSantis has indicated that he wants to confront China on all fronts from the start.
DeSantis plans broad use of executive power
Mr. DeSantis laid the groundwork for what his allies say will be one of his main contradictions to Mr. Trump: his skill at using power effectively.
In his live chat on Twitter Spaces, Mr. DeSantis talked about his extensive record as governor of Florida. He cited his talent for using government power for conservative ends. He said he had studied the “various leverage points under Article 2” of the constitution and would use that knowledge if elected president. On Fox News, he reiterated his plans to use Article 2 to reform the government.
Mr. DeSantis hinted that he would be more heavy-handed than Mr. Trump was with federal bureaucracy. It’s part of one of his core arguments: that he will not only fight harder than Mr. Trump, but that he will make sweeping changes where the former president fell short.
In his Fox News interview, he portrayed the FBI as one of many federal agencies running amok, and said he would exert much stronger control over the entire Justice Department.
He rejected the idea that presidents should view these agencies as independent, saying that if he learned as president that FBI officials were colluding with technology companies — a reference to government officials’ requests for Twitter to remove content deemed harmful — then “everyone involved would be fired.”