Meet Ron DeSantis, Republican who will run against Trump in the 2024 presidential primaries

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who will announce on Wednesday that he will run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is likely to be former President Donald Trump’s main rival because of his rising national profile and fundraising acumen. funds.

The announcement of the candidacy will be made in a conversation between DeSantis and the owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, a spokesman for his political team told the CNN .

The event will take place at 7 pm, Brasília time, on Twitter Spaces, where users of the platform can participate in audio conversations and will be moderated by technology entrepreneur David Sacks.

The tech titan publicly confirmed the conversation at a Wall Street Journal event on Tuesday.

“I’m interviewing Ron DeSantis, and he has a big announcement to make. And it will be the first time something like this has happened on social media and with real-time Q&A, unscripted,” Musk said, adding that he did not plan to endorse a candidate “at this point.”

Such as CNN previously reported, the DeSantis team is planning an aggressive schedule and an unconventional approach to a presidential campaign.

The team is planning an unpredictable and relentless blitz of the political map designed to quickly put him in front of thousands of primary voters, shake up the picture and spark contrasts between the 44-year-old governor and the campaigns of his older rivals – the former President Donald Trump, the current frontrunner of the GOP, and President Joe Biden — according to people familiar with the planning.

Who is Ron DeSantis?

Life in the public sector

DeSantis, 44, has spent most of his career in public service and government.

While at Harvard Law School, he was commissioned as an officer in the United States Navy, and after graduation, he joined the Judges and Advocates Corps (branch of military justice) as an attorney.

In that role, he was assigned to the military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he oversaw the treatment of detainees. He was later deployed to Iraq to advise a team of SEALs (US Navy Special Operations Forces).

DeSantis briefly worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Florida before a successful bid for a U.S. Congressional seat in 2012. He served in Congress until he ran for governor in 2018.

Relationship with Trump

DeSantis was an unknown politician throughout the state of Florida when he ran for governor and was not favored for the Republican nomination.

He then gained the endorsement of then-President Trump, whom he praised on the campaign trail and in TV ads. DeSantis ended up winning the election by a slim margin.

Trump has since taken credit for DeSantis’ victory and accused his fellow Republican of being disloyal for considering challenging him for the presidential nomination.

This narrow victory did not convince DeSantis that he should rule by consensus.

As he detailed in recent speeches, he believed he had a mandate to make the most of the powers given to the governor, saying he wanted to get “all the meat off the bone”.

DeSantis wielded that power by influencing legislation, punishing his critics, and filling state courts, offices, and boards with allies. Some political observers in the state capital say he is the most powerful and feared governor in the state’s history.

He was re-elected by nearly 20 percentage points in 2022.

love for baseball

As a young man growing up in Florida, DeSantis’ life was consumed by baseball. His boyhood team in Dunedin, a suburb of Tampa, reached the Little League World Series in 1991.

He pitched and played third base. In one game during the series, he hit a home run and struck out 11 batters.

DeSantis served as captain of the varsity baseball team as an undergraduate at Yale University. His Yale shirt hangs in his office on the Florida Capitol.

political opinions

DeSantis is married to Casey Black, whom he met when she was a TV reporter. The couple has three children.

He made a name for himself nationally by opposing many of the policies advocated by the US government to stop the spread of Covid-19.

He has resisted mask and vaccine obligations and was determined to keep Florida’s businesses and tourist destinations open through most of the pandemic.

Since then, he has become a leading figure within the Republican Party in fighting what he argues are overly progressive policies favored by educators and corporations.

He lobbied the state legislature to pass bans against teaching “Critical Race Theory” — which argues that the nation is divided by systemic racism — and gender identity concepts in public schools.

Lawmakers also recently passed a ban on asset managers using environmental, social and governance factors when making investments.

DeSantis is a persistent critic of federal immigration policies. In 2022, he was praised by conservatives and condemned by Democrats when he chartered two planes to fly Venezuelan immigrants from Texas to Massachusetts.