FLORIDA, USA — A day after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis officially announced his candidacy for president, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador urged Hispanic voters to not support him in the next presidential election.
During a news conference Thursday, López Obrador accused the Republican politician of trying to win votes at the expense of migrants, Reuters reports.
"All of his playing politics with migrants was because he wanted to be the Republican party candidate," López Obrador reportedly told a government press conference. "I hope the Hispanics of Florida wake up and don't give him a single vote."
According to Fox News, López Obrador said he hopes voters don't vote for those who persecute or disrespect migrants.
DeSantis' highly anticipated presidential announcement for the Republican nominee on Twitter did not launch as originally planned, with the audio feed cutting out or failing to load at times on the social media site.
CEO Elon Musk was heard commenting about the thousands of users who had logged on at 6 p.m. before the Twitter Spaces feed shut down.
About 25 minutes later with more than 170,000 listeners, it resumed with DeSantis at the mic: "I am running for president of the United States to lead our great American comeback," DeSantis said. "We must restore sanity to our nation."
Earlier in the day, the governor completed the appropriate paperwork with the Federal Election Commission, the website shows, and his political team confirmed to CBS News the filing was legitimate.
A campaign video tweeted by DeSantis directly subjects him to attacks and criticisms from Republican frontrunner and former President Donald Trump, who picked the governor out of relative obscurity in the summer of 2018 when he ran for Florida's highest office.
Now, the 44-year-old Navy commander and Iraq War veteran has his sight set on the White House.
10 Tampa Bay's Andrew Krietz and Aaron Parseghian contributed to this report.