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(Trends Wide) — Ron DeSantis’ presidential hopeful launch flopped as one of the early prototypes of Elon Musk’s rockets.
The Florida governor prepared for months to run for president, but in his official launch of the presidential bid he committed a cardinal political sin: offering his opponents, especially former President Donald Trump, an opportunity to make a mockery of him.
First, DeSantis made the unorthodox decision to make his long-awaited candidacy official not among regular voters, but in a Twitter Spaces audio broadcast alongside Musk, the billionaire owner of the social media platform, which meant the most important in his political career interpreted through a disembodied voice.
And still, the pitch interview was delayed and riddled with glitches. The cliché that the best day of any presidential candidate’s campaign is when they first announce his aspirations will not apply to DeSantis, who managed to erase his own message. And even as the event got underway, it felt more like a fan party for Musk, as several conservative opinion leaders called to boost DeSantis but seemed more effusive about their host.
“It seemed like he was a radio host and not the future leader of the free world,” former Trump administration communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin told Trends Wide’s Anderson Cooper.
If DeSantis wants to beat Trump, who nearly doubled him between 53% and 26% in a new Trends Wide poll of the Republican race released Wednesday, he will have to run a near-perfect campaign. So his faltering pitch was not a rosy start, especially since he undermined his core message that he has the kind of discipline and focus that could make his presidency far more successful than Trump’s tenure.
The former president’s allies, who for weeks organized aggressive attacks on the former Trump protégé whom he clearly believes is his biggest threat, could barely contain their glee at the fiasco that spilled over into DeSantis’ big moment.
“Ron DeSantis’ failed campaign ad is another example of why he’s not up for the job. The stakes are too high and the fight to save America is too critical to bet on a rookie who is clearly not ready for prime time,” said Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump-aligned Make America Great Again PAC.
Even President Joe Biden’s campaign got in on the act, tweeting a link to his fundraising machine, which, he joked, worked, unlike DeSantis’ audio feed.
DeSantis tried to divert the fiasco by posting a video bragging that he “broke the internet” because so many people were excited to hear it on Twitter Spaces.
But in giving an early gift to a rival as ruthless as Trump, which will no doubt be retold in increasingly withering and humiliating versions by the great showman at his upcoming campaign rallies, DeSantis is guilty of a major mistake, one which is especially surprising since her advisers had months to choreograph her first official move on the national stage. He is now under immediate pressure to change the narrative so that the chaotic events of this Wednesday do not become a metaphor for his campaign.
Even before it became official, his shadow campaign seemed to fizzle out in recent weeks following Trump’s rebound, some bizarre moments on a DeSantis foreign tour and his failure to deter other rivals from jumping into what now it is a crowded primary field. DeSantis’ shaky start may now offer some hope to candidates in the single digits in the polls, such as former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, that he is on an irreversible downward trajectory.
Problems bigger than a failed audio stream
In the end though, if the Florida governor can shake off the embarrassment of Wednesday night, his bid to win the Republican nomination won’t be decided by Twitter Spaces’ faulty audio feed. It’s worth remembering that Trump, for example, carries a lot more baggage than a lackluster campaign pitch, given his two impeachments, an indictment in a secret money case in which he pleaded not guilty, the $5 million civil trial after he was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, and several other ongoing investigations related to his conduct after the 2020 election and handling of classified documents. Trump has denied wrongdoing in all cases, but he also has a long catalog of wild and outrageous behavior that even some of his Republican supporters find unacceptable.
But DeSantis already had a mountain to climb before making his candidacy official in ridiculous fashion on Wednesday. He’s trying to do something no one in the GOP has managed to do since the former president rode down his golden escalator in 2015: beat him. And while DeSantis’ rivals and what he calls the “legacy media” will focus on the problems in his campaign launch, the real test of the coming months is whether he can launch a convincing attack on Trump.
As the Twitter Spaces broadcast came to life, DeSantis made an unequivocal argument for why his discipline and record mean he, not Trump, should lead the Republican Party in the next election. He presented a ruthless brand of stripped-down conservative cultural ideology while lashing out at “elites” and the media, which is calculated to delight the broader primary audiences he will meet in the coming weeks. DeSantis left no doubt that he plans to lead the most right-wing administration in history, which would hit Washington like a wrecking ball if he wins in 2024.
He accused Biden of imposing “medical authoritarianism” during the covid-19 pandemic, promised a review of the entire “enchilada” by public health authorities in Washington, claimed that Democrats were obsessed with “woke ideology” and with arm the federal government to go after conservatives while they violated basic American liberties.
DeSantis held up his own record of taking on liberals in schools, business and health care as evidence that he could set America on a fundamentally different course that reflects his leadership in Florida, while hinting that little is being done. would do if the former president ended up in the Oval Office again.
“Ruling is not entertainment,” DeSantis said, making a blunt but non-specific critique of the chaos that engulfed America during Trump’s presidential term, before indirectly berating the former president for losing in 2020 and hurting Republican hopes in the 2022 midterm elections.
“We must end the culture of losing that has infected the Republican Party in recent years. We must look forward and not back.”
DeSantis, no national message
It was notable that DeSantis, while obviously appealing to a Republican primary audience, had almost nothing to say to Americans who do not share his conservative ideology. There was no outreach to a broader, less partisan audience. And it makes no sense that DeSantis, if elected, represents all Americans or has any vision of how he would lead the Western world at a time of great international instability.
Instead, DeSantis focused on effectively making the case that Trump, for all his popularity in the Republican Party, has become a major distraction.
But his decision not to mention the former president by name underscores not only the strength of the Trump campaign, but also the fact that DeSantis has failed to resolve one of the most pressing questions of his candidacy: how to take on Trump without alienating his supporters. followers who might be open to a less erratic “Make America Great Again” standard-bearer.
Another challenge for DeSantis is that while he might be making a perfectly logical case for why it’s time for the party to move away from Trump, Republican activists’ connections to the former president are more emotional than intellectual.
Running for Trump might not be a politically sensible move because it risks alienating moderate voters from swing states that left the GOP in the midterm elections last year and in 2020. But Trumpism is as much a sentiment as it is an ideology. . Supporters of the former president have an almost spiritual kinship with their hero. And even many rank and file Republicans who have reservations about his behavior protect him against attacks from those he has portrayed as his enemies.
This hard truth, more than an embarrassing and poorly staged pre-campaign pitch, may be the factor that dooms DeSantis, if he can’t get past Trump.
For now, after a disaster caused by his own campaign, he is under pressure to immediately engage voters and show that Wednesday’s announcement will not prevent him from staging powerful campaign rallies in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire. where he needs to act forcefully to have any hope of taking down Trump.
His campaign could take solace in the fact that while Musk’s early attempts to join the space race were marked by frequent misfiring of his rockets, his willingness to take risks and accept failure ended with him playing a role. key in the US effort to return to the Moon and go to Mars.
DeSantis can only hope he can emulate that trajectory.
