Republican Ron DeSantis announced his official candidacy for the US presidency on Wednesday with a Twitter chat with Elon Musk, kicking off his campaign to take on Donald Trump.

A war is expected to break out between the two.

The conversation between the 44-year-old Florida governor and the head of the social network is scheduled to take place at 18:00 Washington time (2200 GMT) and will be moderated by Republican businessman David Sachs.

Republicans are eagerly anticipating DeSantis’ nomination. As a replacement for the 76-year-old former US president, he shares his views, but not his extremes.

The choice of this format to launch the campaign was unusual.

Elon Musk expressed his satisfaction with this option. “This is the first time we’ve experienced something like this on a social network,” he said. He promised an “unscripted, real-time question-and-answer conversation.”

However, the billionaire, who is known for his ambiguous political stances, clarified that the conversation should not be construed as sponsorship.

The Florida governor is Donald Trump’s main challenger for the Republican nomination. The winner of the November 2024 primary will face off against the Democratic nominee, most likely Joe Biden.

DeSantis has gained notoriety for taking extreme conservative positions on education or immigration. He turned his state into a laboratory for conservative ideas in the name of his war against “so-called common sense.”

But his path to the White House was fraught with obstacles.

The governor, whom many conservatives are hoping to win the presidential election after his re-election in Florida in November 2022, has a wide margin ahead of Donald Trump, the official nominee since November 16. 2022, according to several polls.

Presumably, these polls should be viewed with caution, as the poll is still far from over. But Donald Trump was quick to announce the results on his social network on Tuesday, the first rumors that Ron DeSantis had announced his candidacy.

The main obstacle facing the father of three is his lack of charisma, pointed out by all parties, and the Trump camp has not hesitated to attack him.

“Announcing his candidacy on Twitter is totally in line with his personality,” one of Donald Trump’s advisers quipped to AFP, “because that way he doesn’t have to communicate with anybody.”

The raucous exchange between the two began long before the Florida governor officially announced his candidacy.

“The problem with DeSantis is that he will need a private transplant,” Trump wrote on his social network, TruthSocial.

Trump, mired in judicial investigations, quickly launched his second run for the White House and rallied his base, which was largely loyal to him.

In this confrontation with Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis can count on a huge budget of $ 110 million for his war.

And he relies on this money to try to narrow the gap between himself and the enemy.

In a recent video released by his political action group, a man affixed a sticker that read “Desantis President” over one that read “Trump 2016” on a car.

That sums up the message the governor wants to send to voters, saying DeSantis, who was elected governor of Florida in 2018 with the support of Donald Trump, has become the embodiment of the “new guard.”