ron desantis officially launched his longawaited 2024 presidential campaign on wednesday signalling he will be taking donald trump head on for the republican nomination desantis enters the race as the strongest challenger yet to the former president and current gop frontrunner in most pollsthe florida governor held a twitter spaces event with its owner elon musk that was initially delayed just a few hundred thousand people tuned in for the audioonly livestream with desantis but even with that relatively small audience for a virtual online assembly it was vexed by crashes and delays for half an hour the result was a tsunami of memes and comments mocking the rightwing politicians failure to launch and raising new questions about whether musks drastic cutbacks at twitter have hurt the platform the event began with over 20 minutes of technical glitches hot mic moments and halfsaid conversations before the livestream abruptly cut out the servers are straining somewhat musk said at one point perhaps unaware that his mic was hot at least brieflyfor 25 minutes the only person not talking was desantis at 626pm local time he finally announced himself well he opened im running for president of the us to lead our great american comeback desantis joked in a fundraising pitch later in the evening that he broke the internet while organisers sought to highlight the events popularity the desantis camp said it had raised 1 million online in one hour democratic presidential candidate and incumbent joe bidens team was quick to capitalise on the glitches tweeting a link to a fundraising page with this link workslong viewed as the most formidable challenger to twiceimpeached trump desantis boasts deep midwestern roots a large campaign fund a list of ultraconservative legislative wins and an unblemished record of election victories while trump has dominated headlines with his legal woes desantis has presented himself as the tip of the spear in the struggle of ordinary americans against progressive values he sees as authoritarian and divisive desantis did not mention trump by name but he did sketch out some of the contrasts he is expected to sharpen in the coming months we must look forward not backwards he said we need the courage to lead and we must have the strength to windesantis intends to sell himself as a younger dramafree and more conservative alternative to trump 76 but while trump retains a steadfast national base desantis faces the challenging task of assembling his own coalition from the gops disparate factions he intends to appeal to voters who strayed from the former president and republicans who never liked trump in the first place all while trying to avoid angering trumps longtime backers