A bumpy campaign launch for Ron DeSantis

Transcript

EMILY PECK: Good morning! Welcome to Axios Today! It’s Thursday, May 25th. I’m Emily Peck in for Niala Boodhoo. Today: how a government app is affecting the war in Ukraine. Plus, the world says goodbye to Tina Turner. But first, a bumpy campaign launch for Ron DeSantis – that’s today’s One Big Thing.

Ron DeSantis' Bumpy campaign launch

ELON MUSK: I think we've got just a massive number of people online. So it's, um, servers restraining somewhat.

EMILY: That was Elon Musk on Twitter last night launching or trying to launch Florida Governor Ron DeSantis presidential campaign. The much ballyhooed event was delayed by technical glitches. DeSantis joins former President Donald Trump and five other candidates so far in the race for the Republican nomination.

Axios’ Alex Thompson is here with the big picture. Hey Alex.

ALEX THOMPSON: Hey, thanks so much for having me.

EMILY: So Alex, that was all kind of a big mess. almost comical. Still, at some point, over half a million people were waiting. Why did DeSantis do it this way?

ALEX: Well, I was among the half a million. And I think, Ron DeSantis, you know, in some ways who, who is the most formidable challenger to Donald Trump, he wanted to start with a big media splash. That got a lot of attention. Now, unfortunately, for him, it ended up being a lot of negative attention because he trusted that Elon Musk and Twitter and their technology would not crash and would not glitch. And for the first 20 to 30 minutes, they essentially couldn't, and they had to end and restart a new one with actually a much smaller audience. So the fact that the first campaign event of Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign was a logistical mess, was not exactly an auspicious start.

EMILY: This rollout was very intentionally in the friendliest media outlets he could find. Is that typical?

ALEX: Yeah me and a colleague have, have taken to calling it the safe space rollout? And you know, a lot of principles, a lot of campaigns increasingly will only give access to the candidate, if they feel that the outlet is ideologically sympathetic. And DeSantis is just taking this to a, a new degree where, you know, it was Twitter with Elon Musk and conservative influencers, Fox News primetime, And DeSantis is continuing this safe space strategy by focusing on conservative media. Today, he's also sitting down for interviews with Erik Erickson and Dana Loesch who are also well-known conservative radio personalities.

EMILY: It's still early in the race, DeSantis is going to be competing for attention mostly, I think, with former President Trump. What's the biggest challenge there?

ALEX: The biggest challenge that Ron DeSantis has is that he is trying to dry contrast with Trump while also not alienating the people that like Trump and also keep the “Never Trump” people. So I think that's his biggest challenge and it's sort of this gymnastics routine that no one in the Republican party has been able to figure out.

EMILY: What's your biggest takeaway from last night?

ALEX: First of all, anyone that can tell you how voters in Iowa and New Hampshire are going to vote in nine months is not telling you the truth or they're from the future. Let's put that to the side. I think a lot of people that want an alternative to Trump and put a lot of their hope in Ron DeSantis, a lot of GOP primary voters, they had seen his declining poll numbers the last few months, and they were hoping that this would be the beginning of the turnaround. And instead, I think some of their confidence has been shaken even further, rather than feeling that this is the beginning of a movement. But there is still plenty of time for a rebound.

EMILY: Alex Thompson is Axios’ national political correspondent. Thanks, Alex.

ALEX: Thanks so much for having me.

Remembering George Floyd

EMILY: Today marks three years since the murder of George Floyd by a former Minneapolis police officer. The killing shocked the world and ignited the Black Lives Matter movement. On last year's anniversary, Niala Boodhoo spoke with Washington Post reporter Robert Samuels about his book His Name is George Floyd, which he co-wrote with his Post colleague Tolu Olurunnipa. The book won a Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction this year. Here's Robert Samuels speaking to Niala in 2022.

ROBERT SAMUELS: I think everyone has a person like George Floyd in their life, who they love and and they're beloved by everyone. And everyone who we spoke to talks about how much he said he loved them, that he’d end every conversation with, “I love you, I love you.” And when you hear that, it deepens your understanding of why he said he shouted “I love you” over the last breaths of his life.

EMILY: We'll put a link to the whole conversation in our show notes. Coming up, Ukrainians report Russian troop movements on a government app.

A Government app in the Ukraine allows citizens to help the war effort

EMILY: Welcome back to Axios Today. I'm Emily Peck in for Niala Boodhoo. There's been some movement this week in the war in Ukraine. Moscow now claims to have full control of Bakhmut, the first city to fall to Russia in 10 months. And at the G-7 Summit over the weekend, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky secured more aid from Western allies, including the promise of more fighter jets. Ukrainians are meanwhile helping the war effort on the ground by reporting Russian troop movement through a government app used by 19 million people.

MYKHAILO FEDOROV: February 24, Russia started the full scale invasion of Ukraine and it kicked off the new era of digital country.

EMILY: That was Mykhailo Fedorov, the Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister for Innovation speaking in D.C. this week. Axios’ senior world reporter Dave Lawler spoke with him about how technology is changing citizens’ engagement with the conflict. Hey Dave.

DAVE: Hi, Emily.

EMILY: Was this app designed for the war?

DAVE: No. So this was actually a campaign promise of Vladimir Zelensky back in 2019, that he was gonna put the state in a smartphone. That was kind of the tagline, and they started rolling it out in 2020. there's all sorts of services on there. You can apply for a building permit in the app, and you don't have to go wait in line. And also, you're not gonna be asked for a bribe, which has historically been a factor in Ukraine. Uh, and that was part of the pitch, as well, that it was gonna help clean up corruption by digitizing all of these government services. Then we had a pandemic, so they had to adapt to that, and they added some features, you know, related to vaccination, et cetera. And then Russia invaded Ukraine and they had to think about how government services were gonna change. So basically if you fled the country, you could let the government know, and you could actually apply for assistance to get out. If your home was shelled, you could report that to the government, report the damage, and an assessor would come out and you know, give you basically an appraisal of, of how much compensation you might be entitled to as a result of that. And then there's this feature that you mentioned where, you know, if you see a column of Russian armored vehicles in your neck of the woods, you can take a video of that or a picture and you can report it through the app. And I asked Federov, you know okay, people can report it, but then does the military actually act on that? And he said, there is a system where, you know, they can look at these reports, they can try to verify them with satellite imagery, et cetera., and then maybe they will take action, you know, militarily. So it goes from the citizen on the ground, potentially, to military action from the Ukrainian forces.

EMILY: What about data privacy? Is that a concern?

I did ask him about that. You know, there, there's a sort of biometric feature. You, you identify yourself, uh, like you would when you open a, your smartphone perhaps with, you know, facial recognition, et cetera. Your health data can be stored there. He said that basically, they can't pull up that data without your permission. So, so, you actually have to sign off before the government's able to access that data. He said they can't track your movements around the country. And he also was asked about cybersecurity, right? Russia has a long history of hacking Ukraine, including Ukrainian government websites. What if Russia were able to get into this system? Uh, he said that's a huge priority of theirs, building the security of this system and, and that they've gotten some assistance from the U.S. on that as well to make sure, you know, the infrastructure is, is as hardened as it could possibly be.

EMILY: Dave, does the U.S. have anything similar to this?

DAVE: The U.S. does not have any similar app. There are some privacy concerns there. You know, having all of the citizens’ data be funneled through one app might be tricky in a U.S. context. But also, I don't know if you remember when, uh, Obamacare rolled out online, that was not exactly a smooth process. It does seem to be happening more smoothly, in war-torn Ukraine than it has happened at times when the government tries to do digital, you know, services in the U.S.

EMILY: Dave Lawler is a senior world reporter at Axios. Thanks, Dave.

DAVE: Thanks, Emily.

Singer Tina Turner is dead at 83

EMILY: Tina Turner – The Queen of Rock N’ Roll – passed away yesterday at the age of 83. Her career started at age 17 with eventual husband Ike Turner, and her electrifying live performances catapulted them to stardom. But after years of abuse, she left him in 1976 and went on to have a remarkable second act as a solo artist in the 1980s and ‘90s, selling millions of records and winning 6 of her 8 career Grammys. She is one of only three women to have been inducted twice into the rock and roll hall of fame. To put it in her words, she was simply the best.

That’s all we’ve got for you today! I’m Emily Peck in for Niala Boodhoo - thanks for listening - stay safe and we’ll see you back here tomorrow morning.