Ron DeSantis floats pardoning Trump and Jan 6 rioters after ‘train wreck’ Twitter launch – live updates

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has tried to get over the awkward start to his presidential campaign by outlining an aggressive travel plan, as his allies insisted they remain well-funded and well-positioned for a long Republican primary campaign.

While DeSantis supporters privately acknowledged that the botched announcement was an unwanted distraction, the general consensus — even among some Republican critics — was that it was likely to have limited, if any, long-term political ramifications.

Eric Garcia And Andrew Feinberg write:

A ubiquitous presence in the conservative media, he is seen as an anti-Woke campaigner who used a compliant state legislature to turn Florida into a mecca for Trump-era republicanism.

But if Ron DeSantis wants to be president, he must defeat Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and prominent Florida politicians are not so sure either of those things will ever happen.

Ron DeSantis’ bid to become the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nominee got off to a shaky start on Wednesday when the Twitter Spaces event where he made his announcement alongside Elon Musk was hit by a series of technical glitches.

Speaking about “DeSaster” on Wednesday night on her MSNBC show “The ReidOut,” host Joy Reid joined in the mockery of the event by sharing a clip of Mr. DeSantis at a fundraiser at the Sioux Center, Iowa, last weekend , met a supporter wiping his hands. He wiped his face before patting an elderly gentleman on the shoulder who was sitting nearby.

“Part of running for office is shaking hands,” the host commented. “Not only does this guy eat pudding with his hands, he literally wipes his nose and wipes snot on someone’s shirt. We have of that.

The DeSantis War Room Twitter account ran a stylized ad lasting more than three minutes, which was heavily ridiculed for its strong portrayal of Elon Musk, whose platform was used for the Republican’s long-awaited campaign announcement.

President Joe Biden poked fun at Ron DeSantis as the prelude to the Florida governor’s 2024 campaign was fraught with technical glitches during a Twitter Spaces event with CEO Elon Musk.

Ron DeSantis’ long-awaited 2024 White House campaign on Twitter Spaces was marred by a series of mishaps that gave his political rivals enough ammunition to poke fun at the Florida governor.

Long silences and sustained echoes marred Mr DeSantis’ announcement on Wednesday that he made in Twitter’s audio group chat with billionaire Elon Musk, who has long boasted about making multiple overhauls to the social media platform to make it better to do than under the previous leadership.

Viswam Sankaran reports.

Republicans would love to have some kind of super-candidate who could simultaneously pass all of the policies Mr. Trump issued and nominate all of his justices without firing off tweets that give them headaches but also help them get back on track with suburban victories without upsetting the very uneducated voters (including a not insignificant group of people of color) whom Mr. Trump has drawn into the Republican circle.

But Mr. DeSantis is probably not that candidate and he is certainly not the beta version of Mr. Trump. If anything, he’s probably the next version of Ted Cruz.

The Florida governor decided to officially launch his bid for the White House on Twitter in a conversation with Elon Musk, but the start of their Twitter Spaces event was marred by issues like long silences and sustained echoes. The Spaces feature crashed for some users.

“I prefer to stay out of politics.” Those were the words of Elon Musk when he was forced to respond to a claim by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in September 2021 that he supported the state’s anti-abortion laws.

However, if he actually prefers to stay out of politics, Musk has a funny way of showing it, he writes Io Dodds.