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Screenshot from Ron DeSantis' campaign video

Photo: HANDOUT / AFP

Accompanied by technical problems, the Republican governor of the US state of Florida, Ron DeSantis, has entered the 2024 presidential race. At the start of his election campaign, he wanted to talk to Twitter CEO Elon Musk at a live conference ("Spaces") of the short message service about his ambitions to move into the White House. But the much-publicized event on Twitter Spaces repeatedly broke off and began with a delay of almost half an hour.

The billionaire Twitter owner explained that the problems were due to "overloaded" servers because so many people were trying to listen to the audio event.

»Failure to Launch«

"There are so many people," Sacks said amid the interruptions. "We have so many people here that we're melting the servers, which is a good sign." In between, about 678,000 people tuned in to the live conversation. But when Twitter crashed repeatedly, the event was shut down. The continuation of the session reached about 304,000 listeners.

"Failure to Launch," "Crashed," and #DeSaster were among the hot topics on Twitter in the U.S. during the chat session. President Biden took advantage of the resentment and published a tweet with the comment "This link works" – and a link to a campaign fundraising page for him.

Ron DeSantis had already announced his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election on Twitter before the event. "I'm running for president to lead our great American comeback." To this end, the 44-year-old, who is considered the most dangerous intra-party rival of ex-President Donald Trump in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, published a first campaign video.

The candidacy of the right-wing hardliner had been expected for a long time. On Wednesday, DeSantis filed with the U.S. Federal Election Commission the documents necessary for a candidacy.

Polls on the Republican field of candidates currently see DeSantis in second place with an average of 21 percent – more than 30 points behind Trump. The primaries for the November 2024 presidential election will begin in February next year. The winner of the Republican primaries will challenge incumbent Joe Biden of the Democratic Party, who is running for re-election.

kim/dpa/AFP