The Republican Party is just really weird and uncomfortable now.
Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis launched his campaign Wednesday night on a Twitter Space co-hosted by Elon Musk. Or rather, he tried to launch it. It failed to work during 20 minutes of almost no talking, come coughing, and repeated crashes.
As the DeSantis-Musk announcement Twitter space hit 680k listeners, Musk just ended it. 20 minutes of almost no talking and repeated crashes. The app crashed for me at least 16 times while trying to listen in. What an embarrassing disaster for both Musk and DeSantis. pic.twitter.com/zHIhv2QL0F
— Ahmed Baba (@AhmedBaba_) May 24, 2023
The space started with 600,000 “listeners” (could be bots), but after all of the crashing, by the time DeSantis’ launch actually started, there were around 300,000 and it plunged down to 192,000 as the bros whined about the media and the elites and then laughed about various media outlets referring to them as Nazis. What campaign doesn’t want laughter over Nazis in its opening?
Jason Easley wrote in our substack, “Gov. DeSantis thought that he was going to be a disruptor by announcing on Twitter, but the technology broke and the event sounded like a low-quality Nazi bro podcast.”
DeSantis’ attempt to hide in an audio-only format given the meme-worthy results of his video campaign type appearances didn’t go well.
Can’t make it up, but the DeSantis Twitter announcement has crashed because of technical issues. His attempt to hide behind a platform that was audio only is now officially a punch line. pic.twitter.com/AwEUEe6gxS
— Fred Guttenberg (@fred_guttenberg) May 24, 2023
Ben Collins reported it devolved into a bunch of people just thanking Elon Musk and complaining about Twitter.
Ron DeSantis’ campaign announcement has devolved into a bunch of people just thanking Elon Musk and complaining about Twitter.
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) May 24, 2023
The reactions were fun, though:
Failure to Launch Crashed #DeSaster pic.twitter.com/DYDGkM3NNB
— David Wolf (@DavidWolf777) May 24, 2023
Ok now @jonstewart is winner winner chicken dinner on this DeSantis debacle on Elon’s Twitter. Enjoy this one going through the meme stage https://t.co/bHncfbO50I pic.twitter.com/QX7Qldc1bo
— Kara Swisher (@karaswisher) May 24, 2023
Musk assists in another memorable launch: this time DeSantis SpaceX. pic.twitter.com/sUHCdA835z
— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) May 24, 2023
Joe Biden’s non-POTUS account got in on the fun, tweeting:
This link works: https://t.co/9PzIJkseYI
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 24, 2023
The launch went about as well as anyone paying attention to Elon Musk’s poor management skills anticipated it would. Ron DeSantis might have thought he would look more human next to Elon, after all who wouldn’t, but instead he got eclipsed by Elon’s tech bro fan club at his own campaign launch.
Donald Trump reacted to this failure by mocking Ron DeSantis’ “Red Button” which is smaller than Trump’s, according to Kim Jong Un (do you really want to know?).
If this is really the best and brightest the Republican Party has to offer, 2023 is going to surpass 2015 in terms of the surreal depths to which we have plunged.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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