Elon Musk said he would support Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president in 2024

• Elon Musk said he would support Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis if he ran for president in 2024.
• Musk said he favored someone "sensible and centrist."

Elon Musk said that he would support Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis if he ran for president in 2024.

Musk, the billionaire Tesla CEO and Twitter owner, revealed his support for the governor while responding to a tweet on Friday.

When asked whether he would support DeSantis in 2024, Musk replied with a simple "yes."

"My preference for the 2024 presidency is someone sensible and centrist," Musk wrote, adding that he had reluctantly voted for Biden in 2020 but had since been disappointed by his administration.

Musk revealed in June that he had voted for a Republican for the first time in a special election and said that he was "leaning towards" DeSantis for 2024.

At the time, DeSantis responded by saying he would "welcome support from African Americans," referencing the fact that Musk, who is white, was born in Pretoria, South Africa.

The Florida governor is emerging as a formidable political rival for former President Donald Trump, who earlier this month announced his plans to run for president for the third time.

While DeSantis easily won his re-election in this month's midterm elections, Trump was criticized when the Republican "red wave" failed to materialize. DeSantis has so far remained coy about whether he will run in 2024.

Musk made his latest comments about DeSantis amid a back-and-forth about his decision to reinstate Trump's Twitter account last week, which had been suspended following the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

The platform said it had permanently banned him due to "the risk of further incitement of violence."

Musk defended his decision to reinstate the account last week, arguing that the decision to remove a sitting president from the platform "despite no violation of the law or terms of service" had undermined public trust in Twitter.

The former president snubbed the offer and has so far not returned to Twitter, instead continuing to use the Truth Social platform that he launched in the wake of his multiple social media bans.

Musk tweeted that he was "fine with Trump not tweeting," arguing that what was important was for Twitter to correct the "grave mistake" of banning his account.