Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis is expected to announce he is running for president on Wednesday evening during a livestreamed conversation with Twitter CEO Elon Musk.
Musk shared the news, which was first reported by NBC News, on his own Twitter page and addressed it in an interview at The Wall Street Journal’s London CEO Council Summit on Tuesday.
The pair will speak at 11pm UK time over Twitter Spaces, on a platform once dominated by DeSantis’ chief Republican rival: former President Donald Trump. David Sacks, a tech CEO and supporter of DeSantis, will moderate the discussion, which will feature “real time questions and answers”, Musk said.
The Florida governor will then give an interview to Fox News at 1am UK time, the network said.
Prior reports suggested DeSantis would launch his 2024 bid for the White House this week.
Musk has been coordinating with DeSantis’ team for weeks out of the apparent belief that Trump cannot win another term, NBC News reported, citing a source familiar with the talks.
He said at the Journal event that he was not planning to endorse any one candidate.
The choice of venue, however, signals an alignment between a prime Republican presidential candidate and a tech giant at a time when other major platforms have established protocols intended to help them stay neutral in politics.
But Musk’s time at the helm of Twitter has been marked by a chaotic upending of established protocols. Although he will soon hand the reins at Twitter over to a new CEO, former NBC Universal executive Linda Yaccarino, an exact timeline has not been made public.
“My preference ... is really to have someone fairly normal in office,” Musk said on Tuesday, adding, “You know, I think someone that is representative of the moderate views that I think most of the country holds, in reality.”
DeSantis is anything but moderate. In the last two months, he signed an extreme six-week abortion ban and a slew of legislation cracking down on LGBTQ civil rights, all while overseeing a surge in book bans and picking a knock-down, drag-out fight with one of his state