We’re a month into DeSantis’ presidential campaign. How’s it going?

It was meant to be an historic event: a major presidential candidate announcing his bid for the White House during a live-streamed social media Q&A with one of the tech world’s richest and most powerful men.

Instead, Gov. Ron DeSantis’s May 24 Twitter Spaces chat with Elon Musk all but glitched out before it began, and critics pounced: It was “amateur hour,” a “debacle,” a “fiasco,” a “meltdown,” a “complete failure” with a “teeny, tiny audience.”

“Wow! The DeSanctus TWITTER launch is a DISASTER!” former President Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, using one of his nicknames for DeSantis. “His whole campaign will be a disaster. WATCH!”

One month later, has it been that bad?

Given how it started, one could argue the governor’s campaign had nowhere to go but up. And since then, DeSantis hasn’t lifted his foot off the presidential pedal, crisscrossing early primary states and raking in (and spending) millions in donations. So far, it hasn’t translated into much of a dent in the polls. On the day he announced, DeSantis trailed Trump in FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average, 54.3% to 20.6%. As of Wednesday, he trailed 53.1% to 21.2%.

Here’s a look at some of the highlights, trends and key moments from the first month of the Florida governor’s presidential campaign.

He’s hit the trail running

Despite speculation DeSantis might hold a series of campaign kickoff rallies in Florida — including one in his childhood hometown of Dunedin — his first public appearances as a declared candidate came in the all-important primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. He’s spent at least half his days since May 25 traveling outside Florida, visiting with border officials in Arizona, catching a rodeo in Oklahoma and meeting with donors in Texas.

In North Carolina, he pledged to change the name of Fayetteville’s Fort Liberty back to its former name of Fort Bragg, which bore the name of a Confederate general. He emphasized his support for a six-week abortion ban in conservative Iowa, but sidestepped the topic in bluer New Hampshire, where a 24-week limit has bipartisan support. And in “the once-great city of San Francisco,” he said in a Twitter video, “we saw people defecating on the street, we saw people using heroin, we saw people smoking crack cocaine.

“No wonder why we’ve had so many people move from San Francisco to Florida over the last few years,” he said. “We’ve got to stop this madness. We need to restore sanity to this country.”

He’s been a big spender

In the first 24 hours after launching, DeSantis raised $8.2 million, according to his campaign. He likely has raised much more since, although we won’t know for several weeks, as federal receipts for the quarter ending June 30 aren’t due until mid-July.

But DeSantis was a prolific fundraiser long before announcing his candidacy. A political committee backing his latest run for governor had $86 million in the bank on April 30; a month later it transferred $82.5 million of that to a committee backing his presidential bid. That move prompted a complaint from a nonpartisan watchdog group that said it sidestepped federal campaign finance rules.

Committees backing DeSantis — including Never Back Down, which supported him well before his announcement — have spent more than $15.3 million on ad buys this year, including at least $4.5 million in June, according to tracking firm AdImpact. Most of the June spending has targeted South Carolina and Iowa. And while DeSantis hasn’t spent nearly as much in New Hampshire, he is the only candidate this month to target Nevada.

His competition has grown

Before DeSantis threw his hat in the ring against Trump, others, including former South Carolina Gov. and United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, already had declared. Since then, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Vice President Mike Pence have joined the race. So has Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, giving Florida three notable candidates.

None of the new candidates appear to have siphoned support from DeSantis, who remains far ahead of Pence and Haley in FiveThirtyEight’s polling average. Haley and Trump both have hit him in attack ads; other candidates have largely held back. And DeSantis has drawn endorsements from Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, media personalities Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro, and tech billionaires Peter Thiel and, yes, Elon Musk.

Still, Trump hasn’t seen much of a polling dip since his indictment this month on federal charges tied to his alleged mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort. And DeSantis found himself having to take Trump’s side on the indictment, blaming the “weaponization of federal law enforcement” on “political bias.”

He’s gone on offense

Before declaring, DeSantis was loath to speak against Trump. Since then, he has grown more comfortable criticizing the former president’s COVID-19 lockdown and vaccine mandates, and questioning why Trump didn’t do more to de-swamp Washington during his administration. At one point, DeSantis’ campaign posted an ad featuring fake images of Trump hugging former health official Anthony Fauci that was reportedly generated by artificial intelligence.

To be sure, DeSantis isn’t slinging fiery barbs and nicknames like Trump typically does in stump speeches. But he has referred to Trump as “petty” and “juvenile,” and has painted the former president as a hypocrite.

“He used to say how great Florida was,” DeSantis said in Iowa. “Hell, his whole family moved to Florida under my governorship. Are you kidding me?”

His Twitter stumble hasn’t repeated itself

Despite all the bad press surrounding DeSantis’ Twitter Spaces kickoff, it didn’t become the butt of any late-night talk show jokes. That’s because a Hollywood writers strike has kept Stephen Colbert, John Oliver and other comics off the air since early May.

That’s not to say the governor has escaped the sort of ridicule most presidential candidates usually face. A clip of DeSantis cackling wildly during a May campaign stop in Iowa went viral, prompting comparisons to former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean’s infamous “YEAAAAAHHHH!” during his 2004 presidential bid.

And Trump, among others, needled DeSantis over campaign videos and appearances in which DeSantis — not for the first time — flip-flopped the pronunciation of his own name, switching between “Dee-santis” and “Deh-santis.”

Asked by a Fox News reporter to state his name for the record, once and for all, DeSantis took a pass.

“This is ridiculous,” he said. “These stupid things. Listen, the way to pronounce my last name? ‘Winner.’”

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