Ron DeSantis Officially Launches Bid to Turn Entire Nation Into Florida
“I’m running for president to lead our Great American Comeback,” Ron DeSantis tweeted Wednesday evening, his first public declaration that he’s taking on Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination.
The Florida governor made his initial pitch in a video attached to the tweet, stating his intention to bring his approach to governing Florida to the rest of the nation. “Truth must be our foundation, and common sense can no longer be an uncommon virtue. In Florida, we proved that it can be done,” said DeSantis, whose tenure running the Sunshine State has been characterized by unvarnished bigotry and an adherence to quack science.
The announcement comes hours after DeSantis filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run for president on Wednesday afternoon, setting the stage for an ugly showdown between Trump and the 44-year-old culture warrior who wants to replace him as the GOP’s figurehead.
DeSantis tweeted his announcement video shortly before joining a Twitter Spaces event with Elon Musk. The event was a disaster, however, with audio cutting out repeatedly. It was so bad that DeSantis didn’t even get a word in before Twitter shut the event down and started a new one from scratch. The interview was lackluster, with DeSantis railing about the “woke mind virus” and other cultural grievances.
DeSantis then appeared on Fox News, where he continued to rant nonsensically, making clear that eradicating “wokeness,” whatever that means, will be his priority should he be elected president. “The woke mind virus is basically a form of cultural Marxism,” he said. “At the end of the day it is an attack on the truth, and because it’s a war on truth, we have no choice but to wage a war on woke.”
He continued to preach the need to “tell the truth and not being deluded by ideology,” promising to use the power of the presidency to eradicate this “woke ideology” from all aspects of society — from banking to corporate America to education.
DeSantis has effectively been running for president for months. He stumped for swing-state Republicans ahead of the 2020 midterm elections, has been courting big-money donors and congressional endorsements, and even went on an international tour last month. A few weeks later, he held a rally in Iowa, the site of the first primary caucus, where he lamented the GOP’s “culture of losing” — an indirect shot at Trump’s 2020 loss to President Biden.
Trump clearly sees DeSantis as the biggest threat to his hold on the party, and has been attacking the governor for almost as long as he’s been campaigning. Trump regularly bashes “Ron DeSanctimonious” on Truth Social, accusing him of everything from supporting cutting Medicare and Social Security to pedophilia, while claiming that Florida was already a conservative stronghold before DeSantis became governor in 2019. It’s since become a fetid swamp for far-right ideology, so much so that the NAACP recently issued a travel advisory warning that the state is “openly hostile toward African Americans.”
DeSantis has taken advantage of a Republican-controlled Florida Legislature to turn the state into a test kitchen for turning culture-war hysteria into policy. He’s been decidedly anti-science since the pandemic began, cracking down on public institutions’ ability to impose preventive measures and appointing an anti-vax surgeon general. He’s banned books in schools and cracked down on diversity studies. He’s outlawed gender-affirming care for minors. He signed a restrictive six-week abortion ban. Perhaps most notably, he signed “Don’t Say Gay” legislation that now prohibits discussion of gender and sexual identity through 12th grade. Disney, the state’s largest taxpayer, objected to the bill, leading DeSantis to do everything in his power to punish the company, which he has alleged is “woke.” Disney has fought back, and last week canceled a $1 billion building project that would have brought 2,000 jobs to Florida. The company cited “changing business conditions” in the state.
DeSantis took aim at Disney again in his interview with Trey Gowdy after announcing his candidacy. “I think Disney has gone down the road of wanting to put sexualization into children’s programming,” he said, absurdly. “The company has lost its way.”
Trump and other candidates have mocked DeSantis for the Disney debacle, which many view as one of several signs he’s not ready for a high-profile presidential run. He’s been widely criticized for his robotic personality, which doesn’t lend itself to the kind of retail politics required of a presidential campaign. He’s been visibly frustrated with the media, especially when asked about Trump, and many worry that he and his operation don’t have what it takes to tangle with the former president. Rolling Stone reported last month that Trump’s team had been mocking DeSantis’ team as a bunch of “amateurs” after Trump orchestrated a rollout of Florida congressional endorsements while DeSantis was in Washington, D.C., trying to woo Congress. Rolling Stone also spoke with several Republican operatives supporting candidates other than Trump or DeSantis who believe DeSantis is a “paper tiger,” and vulnerable even as a second choice. “No one is afraid of him,” said one GOP megadonor.
DeSantis is also, of course, trying to unseat someone who has wielded control of the GOP for years. Trump has been relentlessly reminding followers of his grip on the party. “I’m blowing away DeSanctimonious in the Polls, and am leading Biden & Harris BIG, whereas DeSanctus is losing to BOTH,” he wrote on Monday. “I have gotten more people Elected than any other human being. Yet I have to listen to these liddle’ lightweights like “Ron” say I can’t win. Like the Dems, it’s just DISINFORMATION. The TRUTH is, they can’t win!!!”
Trump is right that he’s well ahead of DeSantis in preliminary polls, with most of them showing the former president with a sizable double-digit lead. He’s also right that he’s gotten plenty of MAGA Republicans elected — including DeSantis, whose 2018 gubernatorial campaign was fledgling before Trump endorsed him. Trump regularly reminds people about this, accusing DeSantis of disloyalty for daring to run against him. “There were tears coming down from his eyes,” Trump claimed to Hugh Hewitt about how DeSantis “begged” for his support.
Regardless of how well Trump appears to be doing against DeSantis, the former president is currently facing a slew of investigations, and although the probes don’t seem to have hurt his polling, there’s still plenty of time for the narrative to change. DeSantis insists that it’s time for the party to move on from Trump, and that he’s the only Republican who has a chance to beat Biden. The problem for him and for the rest of the Republican field, however, is that they’ve largely shied away from attacking the man they need to defeat. DeSantis, for example, has pitched himself as the cure to the GOP’s “culture of losing,” but is too scared of alienating MAGA conservatives to actually admit that Trump lost the 2020 election.