Florida Governor Ron DeSantis opted out of a large, grassroots-led announcement for his campaign for the Republican nomination, instead opting to spend the day schmoozing billionaire donors at the Four Seasons Hotel in Miami, before appearing on billionaire Elon Musk’s Twitter, followed by billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s Fox this evening.
His “if you can’t be a billionaire, have them run your campaign” approach appears in stark juxtaposition with former President Donald J. Trump’s campaigning style. Trump prefers to shun the donor class, and host rallies for ordinary Americans across the country. DeSantis clearly intends to shore up his war chest before hitting the real campaign trail, proper. If he does at all.
On Wednesday evening, DeSantis will announce his candidacy alongside Twitter owner Elon Musk and David Sacks.
While Musk recently handed over the reins of Twitter to his new Chief Executive Officer, Linda Yaccarino, a long-time World Economic Forum executive, Sacks’s history as a donor to both Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney will likely raise eyebrows about his involvement with Ron DeSantis.
The Billionaires Are Back, Buying Elections?
Another of DeSantis’ major donors is Citadel capital’s hedge-fund billionaire Ken Griffin. Griffin, who has already donated more than $5 million to DeSantis. Griffin “bundled between $50,000 and $100,000″ into Obama’s 2008 campaign and is listed as a $1+ million donor to the Obama Foundation.
Despite being considered a GOP supporter, Griffin has made large political donations to other leading Democrats, including former Senator Chris Dodd, former Mayor of Chicago Rahm Emmanuel, and the current United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry.
Griffin is also unambiguous in his dislike of Donald Trump, calling the former President a “three-time-loser” and insisting the GOP should “move on” from Trump.
Nor is Elon Musk above shelving his principles when investors begin waving dollar bills – or rather Chinese yuan – under his nose. Chinese Communist Party-linked companies and investment funds even helped fund his Twitter takeover in 2022. A year prior, Musk celebrated the 100-year anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party on Weibo, a Chinese alternative to Twitter, by adding a jubilant banner to his profile, complete with the hammer and sickle on a blood red background.
Nor is Musk uncomfortable with the Hollywood elite, appearing at Heidi Klum’s 21st Annual Halloween Party wearing a suit of Satanic leather armor adorned with a “Baphomet skull and inverted cross” shortly after his Twitter purchase.
The suit, sold by Abracadabra NYC for a reported $7,500, was designed by Dale Caldwell, whose other products include breastplates with grinning demons and wristbands decorated with the word ‘Possesed’, picked out in fire with an upside-down cross and devil’s tail, advertised with hashtags such as #thedevilschampion.
Fox & Murdoch.
DeSantis also has a fine line to tread when it comes to traditional media. Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News remains important to him, especially given that its remaining audience is more Paul Ryan/Karl Rove friendly, since the firing of Tucker Carlson.
This will likely appeal to the plethora of Cruz 2016 and Heritage Foundation staffers now surrounding DeSantis in Tallahassee, for the campaign. His ‘Never Back Down’ PAC has frequently posted polling from a firm called “Public Opinion Strategies”, which a National Pulse investigation was able to link with not just Paul Ryan and Karl Rove, but also with a former Soros executive.
POS is part of a wider firm, GP3, run by Soros executive Darrell Lauterbach. One of the top GP3 partners, Phil Cox, “serves on the Board of the Senate Leadership Fund and WinRed, the GOP’s small-dollar fundraising platform,” raising a serious conflict of interest when you consider that Cox is also a “senior advisor” to DeSantis.
Fox News will doubtless turn its guns on Donald Trump over the coming months, itself having to tread a fine line for the decreasing percentage of its audience that still support Donald Trump.
Still, the evidence exists for anyone willing to see it. While Ron DeSantis may himself not be a billionaire oligarch – he sure seems to cozy up to a lot of them.
Jake Welch and Jack Montgomery contributed to this story.
