Elon Musk has said he would support Donald Trump\u2019s arch rival, Ron DeSantis, in 2024 if the Florida governor were to run for president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYes\u201d, Musk said in a tweet when asked if he would support DeSantis in 2024, after suggesting he had not found his ideal candidate among Democrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy preference for the 2024 presidency is someone sensible and centrist. I had hoped that would the case for the Biden administration, but have been disappointed so far,\u201d Musk tweeted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The entrepreneur\u2019s remarks are the clearest sign of his political backing after he indicated in June this year that he was still mulling his Republican preference for president but that he was\u00a0\u201cleaning towards\u201d DeSantis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The move may prove a boost for DeSantis in what Republicans expect to be a bruising battle between Trump and DeSantis for presidential nomination, with some predicting\u00a0\u201ca lot of blood on the floor\u201d\u00a0in a fight between the two. The Florida governor won a landslide in this month\u2019s midterm elections, while Trump was criticised for the Republicans\u2019 failure to deliver the much-promised \u201cred wave\u201d after the\u00a0defeat\u00a0of key candidates he endorsed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Musk also said on Friday night that he was \u201cfine with Trump not tweeting\u201d after having his account reinstated last weekend. \u201cThe important thing is that Twitter correct a grave mistake in banning his account, despite no violation of the law or terms of service. Deplatforming a sitting president undermined public trust in Twitter for half of America.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Twitter\u00a0banned Trump\u00a0after the January 6 attack last year, saying his posts were \u201chighly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the US Capitol\u201d. Trump was also banned from Facebook, Instagram and YouTube after the riot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Musk\u2019s tenure at Twitter has been turbulent, with the owner admitting that Twitter has suffered a \u201cmassive\u201d drop in advertising revenue amid concerns about his plans for moderating content on the platform, including the fate of banned accounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He has told Twitter employees that \u201croughly half\u201d of the platform\u2019s revenues need to come from subscriptions in order to \u201csurvive the upcoming economic downturn\u201d. According to Twitter\u2019s last set of annual results, advertising accounted for 90% of its $5.1bn in revenues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Elon Musk has said he would support Donald Trump\u2019s arch rival, Ron DeSantis, in 2024 if the Florida governor were to run for president. \u201cYes\u201d, Musk said in a tweet when asked if he would support DeSantis in 2024, after suggesting he had not found his ideal candidate among Democrats. \u201cMy preference for the 2024 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":27690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[5304,5777,5178,9649,7960,6576,10102,911,4119,5468,5321,8394,3642,10342,7259,8386,7574,3805,11377,6944,6575,13301,8383,13235,8664,5350,184,6348,12790,3954,9550],"class_list":["post-27689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-attack","tag-banned","tag-biden","tag-capitol","tag-case","tag-democrats","tag-desantis","tag-election","tag-elon-musk","tag-facebook","tag-florida","tag-instagram","tag-landslide","tag-law","tag-musk","tag-platform","tag-presidency","tag-president","tag-presidential","tag-republican","tag-republicans","tag-results","tag-revenue","tag-riot","tag-ron-desantis","tag-twitter","tag-united-states-president-donald-john-trump-jr","tag-us","tag-weekend","tag-will","tag-youtube"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51326,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27689\/revisions\/51326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}