Ron DeSantis has officially announced he will run for US president.

The Florida Governor officially entered the 2024 presidential race on Wednesday, after months of speculation. But the hotly anticipated event, hosted on Twitter Spaces, crashed several times, with Elon Musk saying the servers appeared to be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of people trying to listen.

The 44-year-old Republican politician was first considered a potential candidate for the GOP presidential nomination after emerging from the pandemic as a hard-line conservative leader.

Here the Independent looks at the man behind the candidacy.