Ron DeSantis has made his long-awaited 2024 presidential bid official as his former mentor Donald Trump denounced him as “disloyal”.
Mr DeSantis filed the requisite election paperwork on Wednesday, hours before he was due to formally launch his campaign on Twitter alongside Elon Musk, the platform’s owner.
The Florida governor is considered Mr Trump’s strongest challenger for the Republican nomination.
In a withering attack, the former president said: “He desperately needs a personality transplant and, to the best of my knowledge, they are not medically available yet.”
It came as a poll of polls showed the 76-year-old has doubled his lead over Mr DeSantis, 44, among Republican primary voters.
Ahead of the announcement, Mr Trump said Mr DeSantis – whom he credibly claims to have put on the political map – was “a disloyal person”.
He said: “Ron DeSanctus [sic] can’t win the general election (or get the nomination).”
Mr DeSantis enters the race at a distant second to his former mentor.
National averages by the polling website FiveThirtyEight showed that Mr Trump’s lead increased from 16 points in early March to 33 points on Wednesday.
DeSantis insiders have shaken off concerns over the polls, with one telling the Telegraph: “The only poll that matters is on election day.”
The governor’s supporters have urged other Republican rivals to quit the race and get behind him to “avoid a repeat of 2016, when a crowded field allowed Trump to win with a plurality”.
Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador; Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator; Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor; and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy have all entered the race.
Mr DeSantis was due to set out his vision for the Republican Party on Twitter Spaces, an audio-only conversation platform, in a discussion with Mr Musk moderated by David Sacks, the technology entrepreneur.
The decision to kickstart his presidential bid alongside Mr Musk, one of the world’s richest men, took many by surprise.
But it offers several advantages – along with Mr Musk’s 140 million followers, the novel approach highlights the generational divide between the 44-year-old governor and Mr Trump.
It marked the start of what is expected to be a protracted and bruising contest between the two Republican frontrunners, which formally begins in Iowa early next year.
Entry to race ‘overdue’
However, even some of Mr DeSantis’s biggest financial backers fear he has lost momentum by delaying his entry into the race.
“A lot of people have been waiting and it just seems overdue,” said Dan Eberhart, a major DeSantis donor.
Dennis Lennox, a longtime GOP strategist who has supported Mr DeSantis, said: “The dynamics have changed – nobody is intimidated by Ron DeSantis getting into the race anymore.
“Now his opponent is not just Donald Trump, it’s the several other Republicans who think they now have a lane because he’s taken so long to get into this race.”
It is an extraordinary political ascent for Mr DeSantis, who has gone from a little-known congressman to a potential president in just a few short years.
The groundwork for his rapid rise to power was laid, ironically enough, by Mr Trump in 2018, who secured his success by endorsing him in the Florida governor’s race
As Mr Trump has highlighted, allies and detractors all agree his Achilles’ heel is his social awkwardness, and a reluctance to engage in traditional retail politics.
But the self-described ”anti-woke” crusader has gathered legions of admirers as one of the country’s most prominent advocates for America’s culture wars.
It has led him into conflict with Disney, drag queens and primary school libraries.
Like Mr Trump, the Florida governor has cast himself as a political outsider, but his career path shows establishment pedigree.
He grew up in a modest home in Dunedin, Florida. His mother was a nurse and his father installed Nielsen TV-rating boxes.
As a child, he was a talented academic and sportsman, if socially introverted. He went on to study at Harvard and Yale.
He joined the Navy as a young lawyer and was stationed in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.
