After months of rumors and speculative reasoning, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has finally taken the plunge and submitted the necessary papers to run for president in 2024. By doing so, he has put himself up for a contest with Donald Trump, who is the current frontrunner for the Republican party.
The former president gave his reaction to the news on Wednesday evening by mocking DeSantis on Truth Social with a series of posts, photographs of the current polling, and even some thoughts expressed by other users of social media.
“I’d like to personally congratulate ‘Rob’ DeSanctimonious on finally announcing that he will be entering the race for President of the United States. Hopefully, he will get the full experience of being attacked by the Marxists, Communists, and Radical Left Lunatics of our Country, without which he will never know the kind of job he is doing. These Lowlifes & Misfits are far worse than the leaders of hostile foreign countries. They must be soundly defeated in order to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump posted.
Take a look at it:
“Ron DeSantis’ decision to announce his 2024 White House bid in a conversation with Elon Musk on Twitter on Wednesday will make a typically blunt statement about his campaign, the unruly populism of the modern Republican Party, and an accelerating conservative media revolution,” Stephen Collinson of CNN wrote a commentary on Tuesday before DeSantis’ campaign launch.
According to Fox News, DeSantis met with his biggest financial backers this week in Miami and made his declaration at the same time.
In the meantime, the New York Times reported earlier on Wednesday that a well-known political organization is preparing for a significant voter-outreach drive in support of DeSantis’ presidential campaign.
With a fifth contact in the crucial Iowa caucuses, the ambitious effort intends to contact every potential DeSantis supporter at least four times in New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. The group is preparing a large $100 million investment in its outreach activities in order to achieve it.
“As part of a comprehensive on-the-ground organizing operation, the campaign plans to hire over 2,600 field organizers by Labor Day. This substantial number of personnel is quite extraordinary, even for campaigns with substantial funding, highlighting the significant scale and scope of their organizational efforts,” the Times added.
The source added the following:
Top officials with the pro-DeSantis group, a super PAC called Never Back Down, provided their most detailed account yet of their battle plan to aid Mr. DeSantis, whom they believe they can sell as the only candidate to take on — and win — the cultural fights that are definitional for the Republican Party in 2024.
The group said it expected to have an overall budget of at least $200 million, including more than $80 million to be transferred from an old DeSantis state political account, for the daunting task of vaulting the Florida governor past former President Donald J. Trump, who has established himself as the dominant early front-runner.
In addition to securing endorsements in early primary states, distributing mailers, planning events on college campuses, airing television advertisements, collecting small campaign donations in an escrow account, and covertly mobilizing crowds for the governor’s events, the group has taken on a variety of duties typically handled by a campaign.
They are actively seeking employees in 18 states, and there are plans to form a variety of pro-DeSantis alliances, including ones that are concerned with veterans, abortion, gun rights, and issues relating to agriculture, according to the Times story.
“No one has ever contemplated the scale of this organization or operation, let alone done it,” Chris Jankowski, the group’s chief executive, told the outlet. “This has just never even been dreamed up.”
The company has built a training center outside of Des Moines, Iowa, cleverly dubbed “Fort Benning” in honor of the former Army training site.
189 people have already successfully completed an intensive eight-day training session at the facility, constituting the first wave of a larger organizing force. Door-to-door canvassing for the campaign started on Wednesday in New Hampshire, according to the Times.
As “DeSantis prepared for his first campaign events as a declared candidate, his allies for the first time detailed the show of force they are mustering to advance their strategy for prying away supporters of Mr. Trump,” said the outlet.
