Trump ready to troll as DeSantis’ 2024 White House launch has glitchy start

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis made his long-awaited entry into the 2024 US presidential campaign

It descended into a fiasco as the live Twitter event intended to announce his candidacy was derailed by glitches

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Ron DeSantis has become Donald Trump’s biggest rival for the Republican nomination. Photo: AFP

Published: 4:29pm, 25 May 2023Updated: 4:30pm, 25 May 2023

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis suffered a chaotic start to his 2024 presidential election race when glitches marred an online forum hosted by Twitter owner Elon Musk that was meant to showcase DeSantis’ fitness for the job.

The Twitter broadcast of the hour-long interview on Wednesday, which had been intended as the formal launch for the DeSantis campaign, lost sound for extended stretches and thousands of users were either unable to join or were dropped.

It was an inauspicious start for a campaign predicated on the governor’s executive competence.

“We must end the culture of losing that has infected the Republican Party in recent years,” DeSantis said in the event with Musk once the problems were largely resolved. The hashtag #DeSaster was trending on Twitter.

DeSantis’ entrance in the Republican contest sets up a showdown with his one-time ally, former president Donald Trump, who lost the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden.

The Florida governor framed himself as a get-it-done executive who stood up to the federal government over Covid policies and who has put an indelibly conservative stamp on his home state.