Ron DeSantis’ long-awaited 2024 run for the White House suffered technical glitches after a Twitter live stream went down.
That means the Florida governor’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination started 20 minutes late.
He used the event to promote his conservative credentials, anti-lockdown stance and education reforms.
“I am running for president of the United States to lead our great American comeback,” he said.
The Florida governor is seen as the main challenger to former President Donald Trump for his party’s nomination in the 2024 general election.
Mr. DeSantis is a relative newcomer to American politics, first elected to the House of Representatives in 2012. Just six years later in 2018 — after an unsuccessful bid to become a senator — he was elected governor of Florida.
He has overseen the passage of high-profile laws that make gun ownership easier, limit sex and gender identity education in schools, and reduce access to abortion.
He has claimed that this “Florida Blueprint” could serve as a guide for federal policies, which would move America in an increasingly conservative direction.
He joins a growing list of contenders trying to unseat Mr. Trump, who leads the Republican field by more than 30 points in national opinion polls.
By the time the conversation started on Twitter on Wednesday evening, millions of Twitter users had left the platform.
Since Mr. Musk took the reins of Twitter in October, he has laid off thousands of employees, including engineers responsible for the site’s operations and troubleshooting.
Mr DeSantis’ team moved quickly to iron out the technical stumbling blocks, writing on Twitter that the announcement had broken the “internet with great excitement”, and posting a link to the campaign’s website.
His press secretary Brian Griffin claimed the online event had raised $1m (£808,000) in an hour.
At one point, the Twitter event drew more than 600,000 viewers, but by the end, fewer than 300,000, according to data from JEE News. Interview with Elon Musk last month attracted more than three million listeners on Twitter Spaces.
Once running, Mr. DeSantis turned the conversation to his conservative credentials by talking about his state’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis — an anti-lockdown approach many Republicans applauded.
He defended his reforms to Florida’s education system, saying his state had “chosen facts over fear, education over education, law and order over riots and disorder”.
Later, speaking to JEE News, Mr. DeSantis outlined more specific commitments, including declaring a state of emergency on the nation’s southern border on his first day in the White House. He also promised to fire FBI Director Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee, and scale back President Joe Biden’s “anti-American energy policies.”
Earlier on Wednesday, Mr DeSantis confirmed he would seek the Republican presidential nomination, and registered with the Federal Election Commission before releasing a stylized announcement video.
“Our border is a disaster, crime permeates our cities … and the president is fuming,” he says in the video. “But fall is a choice, success is attainable, and freedom is worth fighting for.”
