• Profile Ron DeSantis aspires to be a 'Super Trump' in the elections
  • Elections Ron DeSantis, the only one who can snatch the Republican throne from Trump

What was an open secret will be officially confirmed with a live broadcast through Twitter, with a media display at the height of the times. Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, will announce his candidacy for the White House for the Republican Party on Wednesday night with a live conversation with the owner of the social network, the always thorny Elon Musk, in a novel and surprising element with which the Jacksonville intends to make as much noise as possible from the beginning. And, hours earlier, DeSantis formalized the candidacy in a document submitted to the federal election commission.

It will be the starting gun of what seems, a priori, the only one among the three aspiring Republicans that can complicate the re-election options of former President Donald Trump. DeSantis is an old-fashioned conservative, perceived among the bases of the party as the ideal option to return to a path of some normality after the irruption of a figure as polarizing as dangerous and harmful to the future of the formation.

Trump, for his part, is as clear that DeSantis will be his main rival to beat in these primaries as DeSantis is the fact that he needs to surpass the former president in visibility and attention at all costs. That is why it is not surprising that the governor of Florida starts with a coup de effect, surrounding himself with what is, possibly, the most controversial and famous businessman in the world at this time. Despite not having Musk's official support for his candidacy, it is still an important point in his favor.

And for the South African it is a shrewd strategic move to ensure that an important part of the elections are settled and debated in his forum. The traffic will come in handy in his attempt to justify the mammoth investment of 44,000 million dollars he paid for the platform. It could even encourage Trump to reactivate his Twitter account now that he no longer has a veto imposed by the previous leadership.

It didn't take long for supporters of the former US president to react. His candidacy had not even been officially confirmed and they were already criticizing the ways chosen by the governor to announce it. "This is one of the most misplaced campaign launches in modern history," Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Make America Great Again, a support group for the former president, said Tuesday. "The only thing less close than launching a campaign via Twitter is DeSantis' after party at the Four Seasons resort for the elite Four Seasons in Miami."

Not only was the celebration planned at the luxury hotel for some of its most powerful contributors, but an interview on Fox News alongside Tey Gowdy, the former congressman from South Carolina.

The challenge of defeating Trump

Now the million-dollar question is whether or not DeSantis has a real chance of defeating Trump. The polls clearly say no, but the history of previous primaries paints a very different story. There are cases like that of Barack Obama, who being below 20% in voting intention managed to break the indisputable favoritism of Hillary Clinton in the final stretch of the Democratic primaries. This is also the case of former Arizona Senator John McCain, who ended up signing a spectacular comeback to become the Republican candidate in 2008.

DeSantis has time to improve his numbers in the polls, which at the moment throw a complicated picture. According to the Real Clear Politics portal, the New York tycoon leads the rest of the pursuers by 36 points on average. It has more than 50% of voting intention compared to 19% of Jacksonville. The rest of those confirmed and those who could join the race – names like Asa Hutchinson, Mike Pence, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott or Nikki Haley – do not even reach 5% of options to attract voters.

If the cat is taken to the water, the polls show a tie between DeSantis and President Joe Biden, who announced his intention to seek re-election a month ago.


  • Elon Musk
  • Joe Biden
  • Hillary Clinton
  • Barack Obama
  • Donald Trump
  • Republican Party USA

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