Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida plunged into his first full day of presidential campaigning on Thursday after his sputtering Twitter rollout the night before, holding a series of interviews with friendly conservative commentators and announcing a series of in-person events in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina next week.
For Mr. DeSantis, the immediate challenge appeared to be moving past the rough kickoff and appealing to a mainstream Republican audience, after a Twitter discussion with the billionaire Elon Musk that often strayed into online right-wing grievances and away from the issues voters say they care about most, like the economy.
Acknowledging that a “very small percentage” of Republican primary voters were on Twitter, Mr. DeSantis defended his decision to announce his campaign on the social media platform.
“We felt that there would be a lot of buzz about it,” he…
