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      Los ricos están más locos que tú y yo

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr. está delirando. Sus posturas son una mezcla de fantasías de derecha con remanentes del progresista que fue alguna vez: veneración al bitcoin, teorías de conspiración antivacunas, afirmaciones de que el Prozac ocasiona tiroteos masivos, oposición al apoyo estadounidense a Ucrania, pero además habla bien del seguro médico de pagador único. Si no fuera por su apellido, nadie le prestaría atención y, a pesar de ese apellido, tiene cero posibilidades de ganar la nominación presidencial demócrata.Sin embargo, ahora que la campaña de Ron DeSantis (con su lema: “Concienciados, inmigrantes, concienciados, ‘woke’”) parece estar derrapándose, de repente Kennedy está recibiendo el apoyo de algunos de los nombres más importantes de Silicon Valley. Jack Dorsey, fundador de Twitter, le dio su apoyo, mientras que otras figuras destacadas de la tecnología han organizado actos de recaudación de fondos en su nombre. Elon Musk, quien está en proceso de destruir lo que Dorsey construyó, fue su anfitrión en un evento en un Espacio de Twitter.Pero ¿qué nos dice todo esto sobre el papel de los multimillonarios de la industria tecnológica en la vida política moderna de Estados Unidos? Hace poco escribí sobre una serie de tech bros, algo así como hombres alfa de la tecnología, que se han convertido en truthers, quienes creen conocer la verdad, sobre la recesión y la inflación, y han insistido en que las noticias sobre la mejora de la economía son falsas (olvidé mencionar la declaración de Dorsey en 2021 de que la hiperinflación estaba “sucediendo”, ¿cómo va eso?). Lo que el pequeño auge de Kennedy en Silicon Valley muestra es que esto es en realidad parte de un fenómeno más amplio.Lo que parece atraer a algunos de los magnates de la tecnología a RFK Jr. es su gusto por llevar la contra, su contrarianismo: su desprecio por la sabiduría convencional y la opinión de los expertos. Así que antes de adentrarme en los aspectos específicos de los hombres de la tecnología de este momento político tan extraño, permítanme decir algunas cosas sobre llevar la contra.Un hecho triste pero cierto de la vida es que la mayoría de las veces, la sabiduría convencional y la opinión de los expertos están en lo correcto; sin embargo, puede que encontrar los puntos en los que se equivocan tenga grandes beneficios personales y sociales. El truco para conseguirlo consiste en mantener el equilibrio entre un escepticismo excesivo y una credulidad excesiva.Es muy fácil caer en el filo de la navaja en cualquier dirección. Cuando era un académico joven y ambicioso, solía reírme de los economistas mayores y aburridos cuya reacción ante cualquier idea nueva era: “Es banal, está mal y lo dije en 1962”. Estos días, a veces me preocupa haberme convertido en ese tipo.Por otra parte, como lo dice el economista Adam Ozimek, el contrarianismo reflexivo es una “droga que pudre el cerebro”. Quienes sucumben a esa droga “pierden la capacidad de juzgar a otros que consideran contrarios, se vuelven incapaces de distinguir las buenas pruebas de las malas, lo cual provoca un desapego total de la creencia que los lleva a aferrarse a modas contrarias de baja calidad”.Los hombres de la tecnología parecen ser en particular susceptibles a la podredumbre cerebral del contrarianismo. Su éxito financiero suele convencerlos de que son excepcionalmente brillantes, capaces de dominar al instante cualquier tema, sin necesidad de consultar a personas que realmente han trabajado duro para entender los problemas. Y en muchos casos, se hicieron ricos desafiando la sabiduría convencional, lo que los predispone a creer que ese desafío está justificado por dondequiera que se le mire.A esto hay que añadir el hecho de que una gran riqueza hace que sea demasiado fácil rodearse de personas que te dicen lo que quieres oír y validan tu creencia en tu propia brillantez, una suerte de versión intelectual del traje nuevo del emperador.Y si los hombres de la tecnología que llevan la contra hablan, es entre ellos. El empresario tecnológico y escritor Anil Dash nos dice que “es imposible exagerar el grado en que muchos directores ejecutivos de grandes empresas tecnológicas y capitalistas de riesgo se están radicalizando al vivir dentro de su propia burbuja cultural y social”. Llama a este fenómeno del capitalismo de riesgo, venture capitalism en inglés, “VC QAnon”, un concepto que me parece que ayuda a explicar muchas de las extrañas posturas adoptadas últimamente por los multimillonarios tecnológicos.Permítanme añadir una especulación personal. Pudiera parecer extraño ver a hombres de una inmensa riqueza e influencia creyéndose teorías de la conspiración sobre élites que dirigen el mundo. ¿No son ellos las élites? Pero sospecho que los hombres famosos y ricos pueden sentirse especialmente frustrados por su incapacidad para controlar los acontecimientos o incluso para evitar que la gente los ridiculice en internet. Así que en lugar de aceptar que el mundo es un lugar complicado que nadie puede controlar, son susceptibles a la idea de que hay conspiraciones secretas que los tienen en la mira.Aquí hay un precedente histórico. Viendo el descenso de Elon Musk, sé que no soy el único que piensa en Henry Ford, quien sigue siendo en muchos sentidos el ejemplo definitivo de empresario famoso e influyente y que también se convirtió en un teórico de la conspiración furibundo y antisemita. Incluso pagó la reimpresión de Los protocolos de los sabios de Sión, una falsificación que probablemente fue promovida por la policía secreta rusa (el tiempo es un círculo plano).En todo caso, lo que estamos viendo ahora es algo extraordinario. Podría decirse que la facción más alocada de la política estadounidense en este momento no son los obreros de gorra roja en los comedores; son los multimillonarios de la tecnología que viven en enormes mansiones y vuelan en jets privados. De cierto modo, es bastante divertido. Pero, por desgracia, esta gente tiene dinero suficiente para hacer mucho daño.Paul Krugman ha sido columnista de Opinión desde 2000 y también es profesor distinguido en el Centro de Graduados de la Universidad de la Ciudad de Nueva York. Ganó el Premio Nobel de Ciencias Económicas en 2008 por sus trabajos sobre comercio internacional y geografía económica. @PaulKrugman More

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      Behind RFK Jr.’s Popularity With Tech Elites Like Jack Dorsey

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      Robert Kennedy Jr.’s contentious claims on issue including vaccines are drawing acclaim from tech executives who are giving him money and exposure.Tech executives are drawn to Robert Kennedy Jr.’s iconoclastic takes.Ryan David Brown for The New York TimesThe money men aiding Robert Kennedy Jr.’s political surge As the 2024 race heats up, President Biden faces a persistent thorn in his side: Robert Kennedy Jr., the scion of the Democratic dynasty, who both touts an array of fringe theories and boasts surprisingly durable poll numbers.The Times notes that Mr. Kennedy is drawing support from an array of political outsiders. But perhaps his most powerful base is a group of financial and tech moguls, including the Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who have given him money and something arguably more important: exposure.Kennedy speaks to many of their interests. That includes things like cryptocurrency — he has spoken at industry conferences and accepts campaign donations in Bitcoin. Mr. Kennedy has also embraced some of their favored podcasts, speaking with popular hosts like Joe Rogan and the venture capitalists behind the show “All-In.”And in endorsing Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Dorsey (who’s also a major Bitcoin booster) cited the candidate’s criticism of government censorship.But Mr. Kennedy’s most powerful draw may be his iconoclasm, particularly his willingness to buck institutional thinking on matters like the benefits of vaccines. (That has led to YouTube removing a Kennedy interview because it promoted vaccine misinformation.)“I think he is a lower-intellect, Democratic version of Donald Trump, so he attracts libertarian-leaning, anti-‘woke,’ socially liberal folks as a protest vote,” Robert Nelsen, an investor at Arch Venture Partners, told KFF Health News.Well-heeled supporters have given him money and airtime. Figures including Elon Musk and the investor David Sacks have pushed for a public debate between Mr. Kennedy and Peter Hotez, a vaccine researcher who criticized Mr. Rogan’s decision to let the candidate spout unfounded conspiracy theories on his show.Mr. Sacks and his fellow “All-In” co-hosts Jason Calacanis and Chamath Palihapitiya have had Kennedy on their podcast as well, praising him for being “willing to engage in vibrant debates” and “tearing down all these institutions of power.” Mr. Sacks, who with Mr. Musk also interviewed Kennedy in a Twitter Spaces event, and Mr. Palihapitiya held a fund-raiser for him this month that, according to CNBC, raised $500,000.Meanwhile, the entrepreneur Mark Gorton helped create a Kennedy-focused PAC that, its leaders say, has raised at least $5.7 million. And CNBC reported that the investor Omeed Malik plans to host a $6,600-a-head fund-raiser in the Hamptons for Kennedy next month.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING Smoke from Canadian wildfires again threatens U.S. cities. New York City and other places in the Northeast are facing the return of hazardous air quality, after whitish smoke enveloped Midwestern cities like Chicago. Mayors warned residents to take precautions, raising the prospect of further disruptions to outdoor activities and businesses.The Kremlin moves to seize the Wagner Group’s empire. Russian officials told leaders in countries like Syria and the Central African Republic, where the mercenary group operated, that Moscow was assuming its operations there. Meanwhile, a top Russian general who had prior knowledge about the Wagner Group’s short-lived rebellion has reportedly been detained.Nvidia warns against further U.S. curbs on A.I. chip exports. The semiconductor giant’s C.F.O. said that additional steps to limit sales to China of chips meant for artificial intelligence systems could “result in a permanent loss of opportunities” for U.S. companies in a major market. Shares of Nvidia fell yesterday after The Wall Street Journal reported on White House deliberations about new export rules.Aspartame reportedly will be declared “possibly carcinogenic.” The World Health Organization will say next month that one of the world’s most popular artificial sweeteners could cause cancer, according to Reuters. Aspartame is used in countless products, including diet sodas, chewing gum and candy.The fate of Microsoft’s big deal may be decided soonYesterday was a big day in proceedings over the F.T.C.’s effort to block Microsoft’s $70 billion takeover of the video game titan Activision Blizzard, with three key players testifying: Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s C.E.O.; Bobby Kotick, Activision’s leader; and Jim Ryan, who heads Sony’s PlayStation division (and gave evidence by video).If the presiding judge agrees to delay the transaction, as the F.T.C. is asking, Microsoft’s deal will probably die. But if she doesn’t, the agency may drop its opposition.Mr. Nadella and Mr. Kotick said the takeover wouldn’t hurt consumers. The Microsoft chief reiterated that top titles like Call of Duty wouldn’t be restricted to its Xbox platform. “If it was up to me, I would love to get rid of the entire ‘exclusives on consoles,’” Mr. Nadella said — and blamed Sony for maintaining that business model.Mr. Kotick agreed: “You would have a revolt if you were to remove the game from one platform.” (That said, Mr. Ryan testified that he was worried about PlayStation receiving “degraded” versions of Call of Duty if the deal went through.)But testimony showed that Microsoft isn’t averse to exclusives. The company’s gaming chief, Phil Spencer, has acknowledged that the company held discussions about excluding other Activision games from PlayStation. The F.T.C. sought to highlight contradictions in Microsoft’s case, including Mr. Nadella’s recent boasts about sales figures for the latest Xbox console despite Mr. Spencer saying the platform was “not a robust business.” And the agency’s lawyers noted that Mr. Nadella had told investors the new business of cloud gaming was “one of the big bets that’s paying off,” despite downplaying the importance of that market in court.A decision is expected as soon as Monday. At points, Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley seemed skeptical of the F.T.C.’s questions. Historically, the F.T.C. drops its opposition to a deal if it loses an injunction request.If that happens, the last hurdle for Microsoft would be an appeal of a British regulator’s decision to block the transaction — a potentially even more uphill battle.Central bankers issue a warning on inflation Two big themes emerged from this week’s central bankers’ meeting in Portugal: Policymakers are far from finished raising interest rates as inflation remains stubbornly high, and it is not yet clear how high they will go.A significant data dump on inflation comes tomorrow. The Commerce Department will publish its report on personal consumption expenditures (P.C.E.) at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, a few hours after the eurozone’s preliminary report on consumer prices is released.Both reports are expected to show that headline inflation is cooling, but that prices are still well above policymakers’ 2 percent target. Jay Powell, the Fed chair, said yesterday that “core” inflation — which excludes energy and food prices — will probably not reach that level until 2025.That is forcing the Fed’s hand on interest rates. Mr. Powell added that the Fed could raise rates at consecutive meetings — and keep them at a “restrictive” level for some time. On the subject of cuts, he said “we’re a long way from that,” adding, “That’s not something we’re thinking about now.”The futures market this morning seems to be getting that message, betting on further rate increases this year and pushing out the forecast for cuts well into 2024.The good news: Powell and his counterparts, including Andrew Bailey, the Bank of England governor, said that a strong labor market was keeping their countries out of recession — for now.What to watch tomorrow: Economists forecast that “headline” P.C.E. came in at 3.8 percent in May, its lowest reading in two years. But “core” P.C.E. is expected to tell a different story, hitting 4.7 percent. A possible bright spot: Some economists expect that used car prices and rents will begin to recede this summer.In Europe, inflation is running hotter. Its C.P.I. data is expected to show that prices rose by 5.7 percent from a year ago. Christine Lagarde, the E.C.B. president, has warned that inflation is beginning to become entrenched in all layers of the economy. Her antidote to that: More interest-rate increases are in the cards.$1 trillion — The drop in the value of deals announced in the first half of 2023, compared with the same period last year, according to Bloomberg. The fall in mergers, acquisitions and I.P.O.s makes this one of the worst periods for deal making in a decade, as high inflation, financing pressures and geopolitical tension have sapped activity.How strong are the nation’s banks, really? Months after Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse set off a panic over America’s smaller lenders, the Fed yesterday gave the country’s biggest banks a clean bill of health. But regulators warned that their recently concluded stress tests were just one way of evaluating stability — and that other risks could still pose a threat.What the tests found: The country’s 23 biggest banks could withstand a 40 percent drop in commercial real estate prices — a major concern for lenders now — and $541 billion in losses without failing. They could also handle steep unemployment and sharp drops in home prices.Though the examinations began well before SVB’s troubles in March, regulators did explore whether eight banks heavily involved in trading could withstand sudden panics in the markets for stocks, bonds and other financial instruments. Bank investors were keenly watching the tests, since strong results mean that lenders are likely to have their capital requirements lowered, allowing them to buy back more stock or pay increased dividends.Banks are expected to unveil their new capital requirements tomorrow, along with any changes in investor payouts.But regulators warned that the stress tests aren’t the final word on banks’ health. “This stress test is only one way to measure that strength,” said Michael Barr, the Fed’s top banking supervisor.Regulators are still overhauling the rules. Beyond ramping up supervision, authorities are expected to tighten capital requirements, including for smaller lenders. That said, even if SVB had been subject to this year’s tests, The Financial Times notes, it might still have passed.In other banking news: Bank of America is sitting on more than $100 billion in paper losses tied to bad bond trades, far more than its rivals. THE SPEED READ DealsHong Kong conglomerates have announced more than $8 billion worth of asset sales to help cut their debt loads amid rising borrowing costs. (Bloomberg)The investment firm Silver Lake plans to focus on only giant takeovers, as its rivals instead keep busy with smaller deals. (FT)Artificial intelligenceTop news publishers, including The New York Times Company, are reportedly discussing the creation of a coalition to address the effects of artificial intelligence on their industry. (WSJ)“How Easy Is It to Fool A.I.-Detection Tools?” (NYT)Best of the restSome applicants for jobs at Bill Gates’s private investment firm were reportedly asked invasive personal questions by a third-party contractor that some experts contend were illegal. (WSJ)OPEC banned reporters from three major news organizations from its next meeting, the second time it has done so in a month. (Bloomberg)Britain could renationalize its biggest water utility after the sudden exit of its C.E.O. and its struggles under $17 billion worth of debt. (Sky News)South Koreans became a year or two younger instantly yesterday. (NYT)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More

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      Vivek Ramaswamy Is ‘a Hint of the Future’: Our Writers on His Candidacy

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      As Republican candidates enter the race for their party’s 2024 presidential nomination, Times columnists, Opinion writers and others will assess their strengths and weaknesses with a scorecard. We rate the candidates on a scale of 1 to 10: 1 means the candidate will probably drop out before any caucus or primary voting; 10 means the candidate has a very strong chance of receiving the party’s nomination next summer. This entry assesses Vivek Ramaswamy, a hedge fund analyst turned biotech executive. More

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      Robert Kennedy Jr., With Musk, Pushes Right-Wing Ideas and Misinformation

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      Mr. Kennedy, a long-shot Democratic presidential candidate with surprisingly high polling numbers, said he wanted to close the Mexican border and attributed the rise of mass shootings to pharmaceutical drugs.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a scion of one of the country’s most famous Democratic families, on Monday dived into the full embrace of a host of conservative figures who eagerly promoted his long-shot primary challenge to President Biden.For more than two hours, Mr. Kennedy participated in an online audio chat on Twitter with the platform’s increasingly rightward-leaning chief executive, Elon Musk. They engaged in a friendly back-and-forth with the likes of Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman turned right-wing commentator; a top donor to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida; and a professional surfer who became a prominent voice casting doubt on coronavirus vaccines.Mr. Kennedy, who announced his 2024 presidential campaign in April, is himself a leading vaccine skeptic, and has promoted other conspiracy theories. Yet he has consistently hovered around 20 percent in polling of the Democratic primary, which the party has otherwise ceded to Mr. Biden.On Monday, he sounded like a candidate far more at ease in the mushrooming Republican presidential contest.He said he planned to travel to the Mexican border this week to “try to formulate policies that will seal the border permanently,” called for the federal government to consider the war in Ukraine from the perspective of Russians and said pharmaceutical drugs were responsible for the rise of mass shootings in America.“Prior to the introduction of Prozac, we had almost none of these events in our country and we’ve never seen them in human history, where people walk into a schoolroom of children or strangers and start shooting people,” said Mr. Kennedy, who noted that both his father and uncle were killed by guns.Mr. Kennedy said he now had “about 50 people” working for his campaign. Unlike Marianne Williamson, the other announced Democratic challenger to Mr. Biden, he does not appear to be aiming to appeal to Democrats who are ideologically opposed to the moderate president or are otherwise uneasy with renominating him. Instead, he has used his campaign platform — and his famous name — to promote misinformation and ideas that have little traction in his party.Asked during the discussion by David Sacks, a top DeSantis donor who is also close to Mr. Musk, “what happened to the Democratic Party,” Mr. Kennedy spent nine uninterrupted minutes attacking Mr. Biden as a warmonger and claimed that their party was under the control of the pharmaceutical industry.“I think the Democratic Party became the party of war,” Mr. Kennedy said. “I attribute that directly to President Biden.” He added, “He has always been in favor of very bellicose, pugnacious and aggressive foreign policy, and he believes that violence is a legitimate political tool for achieving America’s objectives abroad.”The Democratic National Committee and Mr. Biden’s campaign declined to comment about Mr. Kennedy.The event, which at its peak had more than 60,000 listeners, according to Twitter, at times felt as if Mr. Kennedy were interviewing Mr. Musk about his stewardship of Twitter, a platform that has lost more than half of its advertising revenue since the billionaire acquired it in October. For more than 30 minutes at the event’s start, the presidential candidate interrogated the tech mogul about releasing the so-called Twitter files, self-driving cars and artificial intelligence.“These are really interesting topics for people, but I think a lot of the public would like to hear about your presidential run,” Mr. Musk said to Mr. Kennedy.Mr. Kennedy, 69, is a longtime amplifier and propagator of baseless theories, beginning nearly two decades ago with his skepticism about the result of the 2004 presidential election as well as common childhood vaccines. His audience for such misinformation ballooned during the coronavirus pandemic.On Monday, Mr. Kennedy repeated a host of false statements, among them:He said that after the Affordable Care Act of 2010, “Democrats were getting more money from pharma than Republicans.” An analysis by STAT News found that political action committees with ties to pharmaceutical companies gave more money to Republicans than Democrats in 14 out of 16 election years since 1990.He claimed, without evidence, that “Covid was clearly a bioweapons problem.” American intelligence agencies do not believe there is any evidence indicating that is the case.And as he blamed psychiatric drug use for the rise of gun violence in the United States, he contended that the gun ownership rate in the U.S. was similar to that of Switzerland. The United States had the highest civilian gun ownership rate in the world, at an estimated 120.5 firearms per 100 people, according the latest international Small Arms Survey. That was more than double the rate of the second-highest country, Yemen at 52.8, and much higher than Switzerland’s 27.6. More

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      How the Internet Shrank Musk and DeSantis

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      If you had told me several months ago, immediately after Elon Musk bought Twitter and Ron DeSantis celebrated a thumping re-election victory, that DeSantis would launch his presidential campaign in conversation with Musk, I would have thought, intriguing: The rightward-trending billionaire whose rockets and cars stand out in an economy dominated by apps and financial instruments meets the Republican politician whose real-world victories contrast with the virtual populism of Donald Trump.The actual launch of DeSantis’s presidential campaign, in a “Twitter Spaces” event that crashed repeatedly and played to a smaller audience than he would have claimed just by showing up on Fox, instead offered the political version of the lesson that we’ve been taught repeatedly by Musk’s stewardship of Twitter: The internet can be a trap.For the Tesla and SpaceX mogul, the trap was sprung because Musk wanted to attack the groupthink of liberal institutions, and seeing that groupthink manifest on his favorite social media site, he imagined that owning Twitter was the key to transforming public discourse.But for all its influence, social media is still downstream of other institutions — universities, newspapers, television channels, movie studios, other internet platforms. Twitter is real life, but only through its relationship to other realities; it doesn’t have the capacity to be a hub of discourse, news gathering or entertainment on its own. And many of Musk’s difficulties as the Twitter C.E.O. have reflected a simple overestimation of social media’s inherent authority and influence.Thus he’s tried to sell the privilege of verification, the famous “blue checks,” without recognizing that they were valued because of their connection to real-world institutions and lose value if they reflect a Twitter hierarchy alone. Or he’s encouraged his favored journalists to publish their scoops and essays on his site when it isn’t yet built out for that kind of publication. Or he’s encouraged media figures like Tucker Carlson and now politicians like DeSantis to run shows or do interviews on his platform, without having the infrastructure in place to make all that work.It’s entirely possible that Musk can build out that infrastructure eventually, and make Twitter more capacious than it is today. But there isn’t some immediate social-media shortcut to the influence he’s seeking. If you want Twitter to be the world’s news hub, you probably need a Twitter newsroom. If you want Twitter to host presidential candidates, you probably need a Twitter channel that feels like a professional newscast. And while you’re trying to build those things, you need to be careful that the nature of social media doesn’t diminish you to the kind of caricatured role — troll instead of tycoon — that tempts everyone on Twitter.That kind of diminishment is what the Twitter event handed to DeSantis, whose choppy launch may be forgotten but who would be wise to learn from what went wrong. There’s an emerging critique of the Florida governor that suggests that his whole persona is too online — that his talk about wokeness, wokeness, wokeness is pitched to a narrow and internet-based faction within the G.O.P., that he’s setting himself to be like Elizabeth Warren in 2020, whose promise of plans, plans, plans thrilled the wonk faction but fell flat with normal Democratic voters.I think this critique is overdrawn. If you look at polling of Republican primary voters, the culture war appears to be a general concern rather than an elite fixation, and there’s a plausible argument that the conflict with the new progressivism is the main thing binding the G.O.P. coalition together.But it does seem true that the conflict with progressivism in the context of social media is a more boutique taste, and that lots of anti-woke conservatives aren’t particularly invested in whether the previous Twitter regime was throttling such-and-such right-wing influencer or taking orders from such-and-such “disinformation” specialist. And it’s also true that DeSantis is running against a candidate who, at any moment, can return to Twitter and bestride its feeds like a colossus, no matter whatever Republican alternative the Chief Twit might prefer.So introducing himself in that online space made DeSantis look unnecessarily small — smaller than Musk’s presence and Trump’s absence, shrunk down to the scale of debates about shadowbanning and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The Florida governor’s best self-advertisement in a primary should be his promise to be more active in reality than Trump, with his claim to be better at actual governance made manifest through his advantage in flesh-pressing, campaign-trail-hitting energy.The good news for DeSantis is that he doesn’t have billions invested in a social media company, so having endured a diminishing introduction he can slip the trap and walk away — toward the crowds, klieg lights and the grass.For Musk, though, escape requires either the admission of defeat in this particular arena or else a long campaign of innovation that eventually makes Twitter as big as he wrongly imagined it to be.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

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      Ron DeSantis vs. the ‘Woke Mind Virus’

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida could have made his presidential campaign announcement in some idyllic seaside park, surrounded by the wholesome families he’s trying to defend from subversive books and the Walt Disney Company. Instead, he did it in a glitchy audio feed with a socially awkward billionaire. Even if the Twitter rollout had worked smoothly — which it definitely did not — it would have been a debacle.The technological failures are, understandably, dominating the headlines. They were humiliating for everyone involved, making the campaign look amateurish and undermining Elon Musk’s claims that firing most of Twitter’s work force hasn’t impaired the platform. But behind these unforced errors lie deeper failures of political judgment by DeSantis, ones that speak to a blinkered and — for all his cultural populism — elitist worldview. How else do you explain a campaign kickoff with more discussion of crytpo regulation than of inflation?DeSantis’s decision to begin his campaign like this is a sign of weakness in three ways. First, there’s his inability to see what is obvious to Musk’s critics, which is that Musk, while perhaps a genius in some areas, is also often an arrogant screw-up whose projects break down in public. (See: the Tesla Cybertruck’s supposedly shatterproof windows or the explosion of the SpaceX Starship.) You have to be fairly deep in the right-wing echo chamber to believe Musk’s self-presentation as a swaggering Tony Stark figure who can be counted on to deliver.Second, DeSantis’s decision to make his tacit alliance with Musk such an integral part of his campaign identity suggests a submissive and receding quality. He ran for governor in 2018 by emphasizing his worshipful fealty to Donald Trump, cutting an embarrassing commercial in which he lovingly instructed his children in the MAGA gospel. Now, coming out of Trump’s shadow, he’s opted to attach himself to another big, strong friend rather than stand on his own. Last night, after the announcement, his campaign tweeted a bizarre, music-less video that features DeSantis speaking about immigration over a montage of images of him and of Musk, as if they were running for president as a team.Finally, DeSantis is so deeply, fatally online that he doesn’t seem to understand that Musk’s concerns only partly overlap with the concerns of the people he needs to vote for him.DeSantis is betting that anti-wokeness, the belief system that ties him to Musk, is enough to power a presidential race. He’s not necessarily wrong: Though polling about the salience of wokeness is mixed, in an April Wall Street Journal survey, 55 percent of Republicans said “Fighting woke ideology in our schools and businesses” was more important than protecting Social Security and Medicare. The reason DeSantis is a major contender in the first place is the reactionary agenda he’s enacted in Florida, which includes sweeping limitations on what can be taught in public schools, a six-week abortion ban and the cruelest anti-trans policies in America.But anti-wokeness has different flavors. There are the worries about the erosion of what were once called “family values,” and then there are the esoteric concerns of Silicon Valley edgelords. DeSantis emphasized the latter on Wednesday night, discussing niche issues in language that I suspect is unintelligible to ordinary people, even those who might hate the brand of social justice politics derided as wokeness. He spoke, without much explanation, about college “accreditation cartels,” the “E.S.G. movement” — investing that weighs environmental, social and governance factors — and central bank digital currency. A large part of the discussion — far more than about, say, the economy or foreign policy — was about Twitter itself.“The woke mind virus is basically a form of cultural Marxism,” DeSantis said later Wednesday night on Fox News. If you spend time on the right-wing internet, that is a platitude. But my guess is that for a lot of people, it’s gibberish. Now, Trump also repurposes ideas and memes from the far-right internet demimonde, but he does so with a lowest-common-denominator bluntness. “We’re going to defeat the cult of gender ideology and reaffirm that God created two genders, called men and women,” Trump said in South Carolina earlier this year. You don’t have to know exactly what “gender ideology” is to know what he means.In his recent book, “The Courage to Be Free,” DeSantis wrote that his first encounter with the left was at Yale University, where he got his undergraduate degree, and that experiencing “unbridled leftism on campus pushed me to the right.” From there, he went to Harvard Law School, which “was just as left-wing as Yale.” What he doesn’t seem to understand is that for all his hatred of Ivy League pretensions, his political outlook was shaped in the Ivy League’s crucible. He speaks the language not of normal people but of right-wing counter-elites, thinkers and activists who come out of the same rarefied milieus as the progressive intellectuals they despise.Maybe DeSantis’s misunderstanding of elitism has tripped him up. As he wrote in his book, the word “elite,” to him, is not about wealth, talent or achievement. Instead, it’s an epithet for progressives, those who share “the ideology and outlook of the ruling class, which one can demonstrate by ‘virtue signaling.’” He singles out Clarence Thomas as someone who is not an elite, despite being one of the most powerful men in America. Neither, in his view, are wealthy Texas oilmen or Florida car dealers or, presumably, Musk, one of the richest men in the world. It is, of course, a standard right-wing rhetorical move to suggest that so-called wealth creators are part of an oppressed class. The problem with DeSantis is that he seems to believe it, so when he’s speaking to plutocrats on Twitter Spaces, he thinks he’s speaking to the people.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      DeSantis Plans Traditional Campaign Stops After Twitter Launch Glitches

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      Mr. DeSantis will make stops next week in the three early nominating states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.After his digital kickoff went haywire on Twitter on Wednesday night, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is going analog next week for a more traditional rollout of his presidential campaign.Mr. DeSantis will make stops in the three early nominating states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina from May 30 to June 2. The four-day swing through 12 cities and towns is being billed as the first leg of his “Great American Comeback Tour.” Mr. DeSantis will start with his first in-person event of the campaign in Des Moines, Iowa, on Tuesday. He will remain in Iowa on Wednesday, before traveling to New Hampshire on Thursday and South Carolina on Friday.“Our campaign is committed to putting in the time to win these early nominating states,” Generra Peck, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign manager, said in a statement.Campaigning in a presidential primary is, especially early on, usually a grip-and-grin affair. Mr. DeSantis’s decision to declare his candidacy on a livestream Twitter Spaces event with Elon Musk, the platform’s billionaire owner, came with the possibility of spectacular failure — which seemed to take place, at least for the first 25 minutes, when the event was plagued by technical glitches, causing dead air and an intermittently hot mic.Mr. DeSantis’s return to a more traditional form of electioneering will still be closely watched. He has had some awkward moments on the trail so far while meeting voters, leading to mockery from the front-runner for the Republican Party’s nomination, former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. DeSantis is expected to need a victory in Iowa and a close second-place finish in New Hampshire, at least, to show that he can challenge Mr. Trump.On Thursday night, Mr. DeSantis is scheduled to attend a reception with major donors at a hotel in Miami. The donors are helping Mr. DeSantis begin his fund-raising efforts. Despite the Twitter mishap, his campaign said it had raised more than $1 million online during its first hour on Wednesday night. More

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      Takeaways From DeSantis’s 2024 Presidential Campaign Announcement

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      Ron DeSantis’s long-awaited entry into the presidential race showed some potential strengths as a Republican candidate, after an embarrassing start on Twitter.Gov. Ron DeSantis’s glitch-marred 2024 debut on Twitter was a distraction from his chance to introduce himself as a serious contender to take down former President Donald J. Trump.It was a much-anticipated moment for the Florida governor to reset after months of dropping in the polls, which made the painfully long 20-plus minutes of Twitter malfunctions on Wednesday all the more disappointing to his supporters.For all the media attention on the Twitter fiasco — The Daily Mail called it a “De-Saster,” Fox News a “disaster,” Breitbart News a “DeBacle” — Mr. DeSantis appeared to have later found his footing on the familiar airwaves of Fox News, a far more traditional — and effective — method of communicating to primary voters. His appearance there was the first time he laid out a substantive case for what a DeSantis presidency would look like.Still, it was a night his team will be eager to put behind them. And it highlighted both Mr. DeSantis’s potential successes as a candidate but also a campaign still in formation while under intense attack from a dominant Republican front-runner.Here are five takeaways.Taking risks on Twitter backfiredThe delay was longer than some campaign speeches.For more than 25 minutes, Twitter wheezed its way through what was supposed to be Mr. DeSantis’s grand pronouncement of his 2024 candidacy, with long stretches of dead air interrupted by frantic, hot-mic whispers before they pulled the plug and started over.The Twitter event with Mr. DeSantis was marred with technical problems.A presidential announcement is the rarest of opportunities. It is the moment when a candidate can draw all the attention on themselves and their vision. Instead, Mr. DeSantis wound up almost as a panelist at his own event, sharing the stage with Elon Musk and his malfunctioning social media site.Fox News splashed a banner headline at one point on its website that featured a photo of Mr. Musk, not Mr. DeSantis. “Want to actually see and hear Ron DeSantis?” read a breaking news alert on the site. “Tune into Fox News.”Even in advance, the decision to begin his campaign on Twitter with Mr. Musk had drawn mixed reviews. It was innovative, yes — and a chance to reach a potentially huge online audience — but also risky.The technically challenged result obscured some of Mr. DeSantis’s arguments and sapped him of listeners, and potential donors. For a candidate whose promise of competence is a Republican selling point, it was a less-than-ideal first impression. Mr. Trump and President Biden both mercilessly mocked the rollout.His aides said Mr. DeSantis raised $1 million in an hour, a sizable amount but far from the record for a presidential kickoff, with no details provided about how many individual donors gave small contributions.Mr. Biden’s campaign was also seeking to capitalize, buying Google ads to show Biden donation pages for those searching for terms like “DeSantis disaster” and “DeSantis flop.”The candidate of educated right-wingersThe DeSantis-Musk discussion on Twitter meandered at times into a cul-de-sac of the hyper-online right.Here’s a taste of the highly ideological and wonky message Mr. DeSantis delivered:“Some of the problems with the university and the ideological capture — that didn’t happen by accident, you can trace back all the way to the accreditation cartels. Well, guess what? To become an accreditor, how do you do that? You’ve got to get approved by the U.S. Department of Education. So we’re going to be doing alternative accreditation regimes, where instead of saying, ‘You will only get accredited if you do D.E.I.,’ you’ll have an accreditor that will say, ‘We will not accredit you if you do D.E.I. We want a colorblind, merit-based accreditation scheme.’”Got that?Mr. DeSantis repeatedly highlighted his blue-collar roots. But it has long been apparent that Mr. DeSantis polls far better with college-educated Republicans than he does among those without college degrees, who heavily favor Mr. Trump and form the increasingly rural base of the Republican Party. And his campaign introduction night showed why that’s the case.The conversation detoured into complaints about the horrors of The Atlantic and Vanity Fair magazines and into discussions of cryptocurrencies and the “de-banking” of “politically incorrect businesses.”Later, in his interview with Trey Gowdy on Fox News, Mr. DeSantis rattled off acronyms — E.S.G. (environmental, social and governance investing) was just one — without explaining what they meant.DeSantis is ready to hit Trump — only indirectlyMr. DeSantis made clear on Wednesday that he isn’t ready to punch Mr. Trump just yet — but he signaled where he will aim once he does.He went through the Twitter Spaces session and two interviews — one on Fox News with Mr. Gowdy, his former congressional colleague, and the other on the radio with the conservative host Mark Levin — without uttering Mr. Trump’s name. (The word did come out of his mouth at one point: “Merit must trump identity politics,” the governor said during the Twitter talk.)But his attempts to contrast himself with the nameless one were frequent.Mr. DeSantis said on Fox News that the reason Mr. Biden could get away with “shenanigans” at the southern border was because there was not a wall protecting it. Mr. DeSantis promised to build a “full” border wall — a rebuke of Mr. Trump’s failure to keep that signature promise.Mr. DeSantis also previewed a line of attack he is expected to center his campaign on: Mr. Trump’s personnel appointments in his first term.Mr. DeSantis blamed the Federal Reserve — Jerome H. Powell was appointed the Fed’s chair by Mr. Trump — for exacerbating inflation. And he said he would fire the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, another Trump appointee, on Day 1. (A Trump senior adviser noted on Twitter that Mr. DeSantis publicly supported the selection of Mr. Wray at the time.)Mr. DeSantis took his sharpest jab at Mr. Trump in the final moments with Mr. Gowdy, who asked him what he would say to candidates who may not want to debate. It was a clear reference to Mr. Trump, who has indicated he may skip one or both of the first Republican debates. Mr. DeSantis, who needs the debates in order to have breakout moments, called for people to take part.“Nobody’s entitled to anything in this world, Trey, you’ve got to earn it,” Mr. DeSantis said. “That’s exactly what I intend to do, and I think the debates are a big part of the process.”DeSantis made his case as a China hawkMr. DeSantis previewed his hard-line policies to confront the Chinese Communist Party. While Mr. Trump focused largely on the trade dimension of the relationship during his presidency, Mr. DeSantis talked more broadly about countering China’s influence, territorial expansion and military ambitions.On Fox News, Mr. DeSantis called for a 21st-century version of the Monroe Doctrine to counter China’s influence in Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine, laid out by President James Monroe in the early 19th century, warned European countries not to colonize America’s backyard.Mr. DeSantis also said the U.S. needed to form stronger partnerships with India, Australia and other allies to counter Chinese expansion in the Pacific. And he called for the reshoring of critical manufacturing — saying the U.S. was too closely mingled, economically, with China.His remarks indicated that as president, Mr. DeSantis would be more comprehensively aggressive against China than Mr. Trump was in his first term. Mr. Trump spent the first three years of his presidency mostly averting his gaze from China’s military expansionism and human-rights abuses because he wanted a trade deal with Beijing. Mr. DeSantis has signaled he wants to confront China from the outset on all fronts.DeSantis plans broad use of executive powerMr. DeSantis laid the groundwork for what his allies say will be one of his most important contrasts against Mr. Trump: his skill in using power effectively.In his Twitter Spaces live chat, Mr. DeSantis talked about his extensive record of enacting conservative policies as governor in Florida. He cited his talent for using governmental power for conservative ends. He said he had studied the “different leverage points under Article 2” of the Constitution and would put that knowledge to work if elected president. On Fox News, he repeated his plans to use Article 2 to remake the government.Mr. DeSantis hinted that he would be more heavy-handed than Mr. Trump was with the federal bureaucracy. It is part of one of his core arguments: that not only will he fight harder than Mr. Trump but that he’ll deliver sweeping change where the former president fell short.In his interview on Fox News, he portrayed the F.B.I. as one of many federal agencies run amok, and said he would exert much stronger control over the entire Justice Department.He rejected the notion that presidents should view these agencies as independent and said if, as president, he learned that F.B.I. officials were colluding with tech companies — a reference to requests by government officials to Twitter to take down content viewed as harmful — then “everybody involved with that would be fired.” More