Governor Ron DeSantis Formally Announces Presidential Run In Twitter Spaces Interview With Elon Musk

Ashley Sadler : May 25, 2023
LifeSiteNews.com

Despite a bumpy start, apparently triggered by a strain on the servers as hundreds of thousands of listeners crowded in, DeSantis announced his entrance in the 2024 presidential race and laid out his vision for the "Great American Comeback."

[LifeSiteNews.com] In the fulfillment of what has long been regarded as a matter of "when, not if," Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday evening formally announced his entrance into the 2024 presidential contest during an audio-only Twitter Spaces interview with billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk that began at about 6 p.m. ET. The news comes after DeSantis officially filed paperwork with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) earlier in the day. (Screengrab image)

The unprecedented interview, attended by hundreds of thousands of listeners, got off to a bumpy start amid technical glitches apparently triggered by a strain on the servers. The Twitter Space crashed about 20 minutes in, forcing organizers to shut it down and start up a new one. Musk later said the problems could be traced to initially launching the space using his own Twitter account (which boasts over 140 million users) as well as the fact that hundreds of thousands of listeners joined to hear the interview, causing a scalability issue.

"Congrats on breaking the internet there," moderator and GOP-donor David Sacks joked to DeSantis before prompting him to begin with his announcement.

"Well, I am running for president of the United States to lead our Great American Comeback," Gov. DeSantis said. Never mentioning former President Donald Trump, who will be his chief rival in the 2024 Republican fight for the nomination, DeSantis delivered remarks denouncing the Biden administration's policies on issues ranging from the COVID-19 response to immigration and vowed to lead the "Great American Comeback" into "normalcy" and "sanity."

"We know our country is going in the wrong direction. We feel it in our bones," he said. "Truth needs to be our foundation."

READ: DeSantis officially files to run for President ahead of Twitter interview with Elon Musk

DeSantis, who soared to re-election victory last year by a nearly 20-point margin, then fielded questions about a range of hot-button topics including the COVID-19 response, Disney, free speech, wokeness, and radical gender ideology. The interview did not touch on the governor's recent moves to enact laws banning many abortions in the Sunshine State.

Kicking off the question-and-answer session with a nod to Musk, DeSantis said, "I think what was done with Twitter was really significant for the future of our country." He argued that government collusion with Big Tech companies cannot be permitted in a free country.

In response, Musk remarked that "Twitter is indeed expensive, but free speech is priceless."

Moving on to answer questions from Stanford professor of medicine Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a prominent opponent of the mainstream narrative surrounding the alleged necessity of COVID-19 lockdowns, DeSantis called for an "honest reckoning" about "what happened during COVID."

The Florida governor, who earned national acclaim among conservatives for doggedly fighting COVID-19 mandates and fully reopening Florida in 2020, said that elites and government health bureaucrats whose "impulses were authoritarian" had failed to follow the evidence when it strayed from the prevailing narrative on masks, experimental COVID jabs, and lockdowns.

"The US government needs to acknowledge the failures," DeSantis said. "All of those agencies need to be cleaned out"... Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here

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