Ron DeSantis announces 2024 White House bid in Twitter event with Musk

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has entered the 2024 presidential race, stepping into a crowded Republican primary contest that will test both his national appeal as an outspoken cultural conservative and the GOP's willingness to move on from former president Donald Trump.

The 44-year-old Republican revealed his decision on Wednesday in a Federal Election Commission filing before addressing his decision in a video posted on social media.

"We need the courage to lead and the strength to win," DeSantis said in the minute-long video. "I'm Ron DeSantis, and I'm running for president to lead our great American comeback."

DeSantis vowed to build a wall on the border with Mexico and not restrict usage of Bitcoin.

"We will move on day one by declaring a national emergency. We will construct a border wall. We will make sure we have remain-in-Mexico... And we really need to hold the Mexican drug cartels accountable because they're facilitating a lot of this migration," he said.

On ESG movement, he said: "I think this whole ESG movement is really trying to do through the financial sector what they could never achieve through the ballot box... We will not be a free society if major financial institutions can do through the economy what people could not achieve through the ballot box."

He also threw his support behind cryptocurrency trade.

"You have every right to do Bitcoin. The only reason these people in Washington don't like it is because they don't control it. And they're central planners, and they want to have control over society. And so Bitcoin represents a threat to them," he said.

The announcement marks a new chapter in DeSantis' extraordinary rise from little-known congressman to two-term governor to a leading figure in the nation's bitter fights over race, gender, abortion and other divisive issues.

DeSantis was considered a rising Republican star, but has seen his prospects dented by months of relentless attacks from the former president who has surged into a commanding lead despite being engulfed in criminal investigations.

Pro-DeSantis political organisation Never Back Down also released a video featuring a 2022 speech setting out his signature issue: the encroachment of political correctness in public life.

"We fight the woke in the schools, we fight the woke in the corporations, we will never ever surrender to the woke mob. We will be courageous, and we will never back down," he vows.

DeSantis boasts deep Midwestern roots, a large campaign fund, a record of ultra-conservative legislative wins and an unblemished record of election victories.

He was a baseball star at Yale, has a Harvard law degree and completed six years of active duty with the Navy, including service in Iraq, as well as five years in the US Congress and four as Florida's governor.

While Trump has dominated headlines with his legal woes, DeSantis has presented himself as the tip of the spear in the struggle of ordinary Americans against the values he sees as divisive.

Viable challenger?

Long viewed as the most viable challenger to twice-impeached Trump, he is better known than most of the hopefuls in the chasing pack for the Republican nomination — but still lacks the frontrunner's national profile.

Trump and his team believe that DeSantis may be Trump's only legitimate threat for the nomination.

The Twitter launch format gives him precious access to Musk's 140 million followers, many of whom are in Trump's base, and the attention of a large section of the moderate voters he will likely need for a shot at the White House if he wins the nomination.

DeSantis has used his position as Florida's chief executive to stack up a long list of conservative accomplishments, signing off on some 80 new state laws targeting "indoctrination" in schools and other public institutions.

They include a ban on the discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in schools, a block on funding for plans to "promote diversity" at public universities and one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, but the launch comes with DeSantis' ratings in decline as a number of policy missteps have prompted disquiet about his readiness to take on Trump.

He faces the daunting task of closing an enormous polling gap, with Trump posting leads of close to 40 percentage points, despite being indicted on felony financial charges and being found liable for sexual abuse in a New York civil trial.

Trump on the attack

Behind the scenes, the Trump and DeSantis camps have been jostling to secure political endorsements from state lawmakers.

At the same time, at the national level, Florida's congressional delegation has broken heavily for Trump.

Still, DeSantis is seen as hampered by a lack of the natural charm he will need to peel away some of the 14 million voters who backed Trump in the last competitive Republican primary in 2016.

The flaw was cast into sharp relief in a recent video seen by hundreds of thousands of Twitter users, in which DeSantis looked awkward and self-conscious as he tried to make small talk with diners in New Hampshire.

At one point he asks a customer for his name and when the man replies, DeSantis simply says "OK" before moving off to the next conversation.

Trump has not posted on Twitter since his two-year ban over the 2021 US Capitol riot ended in November, but he has been using his own social network to attack DeSantis almost daily.

In an early morning post on Wednesday, Trump said the governor "desperately needs a personality transplant and, to the best of my knowledge, they are not medically available yet. A disloyal person!"

'Censorship' of inauguration poem

The White House and advocates, meanwhile on Wednesday, decried a Florida school's decision to remove the poem that author Amanda Gorman recited at President Joe Biden's inauguration from the elementary school portion of its library, calling the move censorship.

The poem by Gorman, who is Black and became the youngest inaugural poet in US history when she gave her reading of "The Hill We Climb," offers a hopeful vision for a deeply divided country, praising a United States that is "bruised, but whole."

"'The Hill We Climb,' was written so that all young people would see themselves in a historical moment, and the president and his administration certainly stand with her," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a briefing on Wednesday. "Banning books is censorship, period," she said, adding "It limits American freedom."

The administration of DeSantis has also rejected portions of a proposed new high school Advanced Placement course on African American studies, and banned the teaching of critical race theory, a university-level method for discussing systemic racism in the legal system, from some college courses.