Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was set to announce his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter space with Elon Musk today, but Twitter itself had other ideas.
Live-streamed group voice chat was quickly cut off after going live at 3pm PDT. Audio was glitchy in and out, sometimes just playing reverb noise along with garbled speech from hosts struggling to determine the source of the problem. Shortly after it began, there were 580,000 listeners on the dysfunctional Twitter space, which was organized by venture capitalist and Musk ally David Sacks.
Twitter has been beset by technical problems since Musk took over last year, furloughing his staff and slashing company spending.
Update: At 3:30 p.m. PDT, a Alternative Twitter Space featuring a live Ron DeSantis was on, though it only attracted a fraction of the listener base that tuned in to the original ad. On the new Twitter Space, DeSantis secured his campaign’s big kickoff moment, albeit before a small audience. “I am running for President of the United States to lead our great American comeback,” DeSantis said.
Image Credits: Twitter screenshot
Sacks called the Twitter Space “probably the biggest room to ever come together online.” Even in its heyday, it certainly wasn’t the largest online virtual gathering on any platform (events in Fortnite and elsewhere easily dwarf Space’s numbers), but there were plenty of listeners on hand for the campaign’s ill-fated start.
Once the second broadcast ended, DeSantis launched into a campaign speech that set a somber tone for his campaign, echoing former President Trump’s divisive inaugural address, right down to his use of the word “carnage” in reference to violence in cities like baltimore and chicago
“We know our country is headed in the wrong direction, we see it with our eyes and we feel it in our bones,” DeSantis said. “Our southern borders are collapsing, drugs are pouring into the country, our cities are being hollowed out by rising crime, the federal government is making it difficult for the average family to make ends meet and achieve and maintain a lifestyle of middle class, and our president, [who] it lacks vigor, staggers in the face of our nation’s challenges, and follows the lead of the awakened multitude.”
DeSantis began his campaign in the friendly company of Musk. The new owner of Twitter, also prone to denouncing everything he “woke up,” previously said that he would support the governor in his run for president. DeSantis avoided the more traditional routes, particularly Fox News, when he opted to make the announcement with Musk on Twitter. The new 2024 presidential hopeful paid the price for that decision on Wednesday, a great moment marred by predictable technical difficulties that his supporters and detractors likely won’t forget anytime soon.
