Donald Trump: Ron DeSantis to announce US presidential tilt

[ad_1]

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will formally announce his entry into the 2024 presidential race on Thursday morning (AEST) at a Twitter event with the social media platform’s controversial CEO Elon Musk.

It will see Mr DeSantis and Mr Trump face off for the Republican Party nomination.

A source close to Mr DeSantis confirmed that the event, first reported by NBC News, will take place at 6pm Florida time on Wednesday (8am Thursday AEST).

Mr DeSantis’ announcement is expected to coincide with his formal filing of notice of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission and will be followed by a two-day fundraising blitz in Miami later this week, the New York Post reported.

An official kick-off event will take place at a later date in his hometown of Dunedin, Florida.

Polls continue to show Mr DeSantis, 44, as the strongest challenger to former President Donald Trump, 76, even as most national surveys also show the 45th president ahead of his closest rival in by double digits.

Mr Trump, anticipating Mr DeSantis’ imminent challenge, has repeatedly attacked the younger man for alleged infidelity and derided him last year as a “typical REPUBLICAN Governor with good public relations”.

Recently, the former president borrowed talking points on the left to argue that Mr. DeSantis has “left destruction” in the Sunshine State, to which the Never Back Down political action committee that supports DeSantis responded by of offering to help Mr Trump — a recently minted Florida resident — pack his bags for Democrat-leaning California.

Since his narrow election as Florida governor in 2018, Mr DeSantis has made a national name for himself by wading early into the culture wars, taking conservative positions on everything from vaccination mandates to Covid-19 to the teaching of gender and sexuality in schools.

Florida voters rewarded Mr DeSantis last November, re-electing him by nearly 20 percentage points over Democrat Charlie Crist, a former Republican governor.

In recent weeks, Mr. DeSantis has openly mused about what he might do if he were to run for president and be elected to two full terms.

In a speech Monday at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Orlando, the governor reflected on the future of the Supreme Court.

“I think if you look at the next two terms of the presidency, there’s a good chance that you may be called upon to seek replacements for Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito and the issue with that is, you can’t really do better than to the two,” the governor said.

Both judges are considered right wing.

“If you replace a Clarence Thomas with someone like a [Chief Justice John] Roberts or someone like that, then you’re actually going to see the court move to the left, and you can’t do that.”

“So it’s possible that in those eight years, we have an opportunity to confirm Justices Alito and Thomas as well as actually make improvements to others, and if you do that, you’ll have a 7-2 conservative majority in the Supreme Court that will last a quarter-century.”

Unlike Mr DeSantis, Mr Trump is barred from running in 2028 if he wins back the White House in 2024 thanks to the 22nd Amendment, which states that no one can be elected president more than twice.

Mr DeSantis will also enter the race with a large war chest, as his state campaign funds and associated political action committees (PACs) – fundraising bodies – have taken in more than $166 million in donations late last month. By comparison, Trump’s super PAC, MAGA Inc., had a relatively paltry $83 million in cash on hand at the end of last year.

This story originally appeared in the New York Post and is reproduced with permission.

Read related topics:Donald TrumpElon Musk

[ad_2]