Well that was awkward.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ long-awaited presidential bid didn’t go quite as planned after the Twitter-based announcement hosted by billionaire Elon Musk was besieged by online glitches.
Those technical difficulties are bound to be fodder for Republican rivals − namely former President Donald Trump − along with liberal critics and other political observers for the next few days, maybe even weeks.
“It’d be like if the escalator had just stopped halfway down,” Jon Stewart, former host of The Daily Show, tweeted Wednesday, comparing DeSantis’ online launch to Trump’s infamous 2015 announcement at Trump Tower.
It typifies what has been seen as a series of questions about whether DeSantis is up to the job as Trump’s chief challenger for the White House. Luckily for Florida’s pugnacious governor, the 2024 contest is a marathon more than a sprint as he seeks to seize the GOP nomination to topple President Joe Biden.
Here are the takeaways from DeSantis’s memorable entry into the 2024 contest.
Failure to launch
The choice to make a campaign debut on Twitter Spaces instead of a more traditional announcement was a bold attempt to showcase DeSantis as a non-traditional Republican.
But it became clear within minutes that this wasn’t working out as planned.
The 6 p.m. event, hosted by Musk and moderator David Sacks, crashed for more than 20 minutes before the governor was able to deliver his speech and participate in a question-and-answer session.
Musk embraced the moment as a chance to tout how Twitter is the new public town square and claimed it was “the very first time” a White House contender had used a social media platform to make their intentions known.
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DeSantis supporters attributed the problems to strong interest in the event. Sacks also defended the crashes as a sign that, “we’ve got so many people here that we are kind of melting the servers, which is a good sign.”
But that’s not how others took it.
“This link works,” a Wednesday tweet from the Biden campaign said, sending users to the president’s fundraising page for his reelection bid.
Trump didn’t mince words either, saying on his social media site, Truth Social, how the “DeSanctus TWITTER launch is a DISASTER! His whole campaign will be a disaster.”
…but, $1 million raised
Even though DeSantis’ stumbles earned him criticism across the political spectrum, the Florida governor’s campaign raked in about $1 million within the first hour of his announcement, according to campaign spokesman Bryan Griffin.
The campaign has yet to share details about the contributions, such as how much came from individual donors.
Once the glitches ended, DeSantis plowed through a speech that cast his campaign as a chance for an American comeback that pointed to the U.S.-Mexico border crisis, violent crime in urban centers and economic inflation.
“But decline is a choice, success is attainable and freedom is wort fighting for,” he said in the announcement video.
DeSantis delivered a rather wonky speech when talking with Musk that detailed his squabbles with liberals over education and culture war issues that tried to connect those dots to his blue-collar roots.
Polling has consistently shown DeSantis as second to Trump among the current and growing Republican presidential field.
Trump v. DeSantis is coming soon
What some have been watching for is a full-blown brawl between Trump and DeSantis, which has been simmering in the right-wing online world for months.
DeSantis is often looked at as Trump-lite. He played up his record as leader of The Sunshine State on Wednesday, “our results… have been second to none.” He then pivoted to say how conservatives “must end the culture of losing that has infected the Republican Party in recent years.”
The comment is an obvious dig at Trump, who has been blamed for a string of losses since the 2020 election, but for now DeSantis has not specifically cited Trump or any other Republican opponent by name. Instead he is calling on GOP voters to “look forward, not backwards” when asked about the last presidential contest.
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Trump, as expected, hasn’t been as coy and has called out DeSantis by name.
The former president mocked DeSantis by posting a satirical video of the Twitter announcement featuring fake supporters including the FBI, the devil and Adolf Hitler.
In another attack, Trump shared an anti-DeSantis video recalling how he helped boost his opponent’s long-shot win for Florida governor in 2018. A narrator can be heard saying how instead of being grateful, DeSantis is “now attacking the very man who saved his career,” with a separate video calling him a Trump imposter.
