Well, for starters, trying to get a bounce from an audio-only event leaves much to be desired.
“Kids, gather around the radio, the Governor is about to announce his presidential campaign!” – Parents in 1930
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis could have chosen a hundred different ways to announce his 2024 presidential campaign but did so with a largely untested Twitter technology that had not been used with such a wide audience before. Things were bound to go awry.
In case you missed the event, the full audio recording is available here.
It was a gamble, and the first 15 to 20 minutes were marred by technical failures including DeSantis, Elon Musk, and moderator David Sacks being booted from the initial stream due to various issues.
The headlines on Thursday morning consisted more along the lines of technical failures than DeSantis’ triumphant and long-awaited entrance to the race:
The first 25 minutes of the much-anticipated event — co-hosted by Elon Musk and David Sacks on Twitter Spaces — were widely panned as a disaster, with glitches overtaking it to the point that Musk was forced to end the live audio stream and transfer it over to his co-host’s page.
The headlines were brutal, none worse than on Fox News, which seemed eager to highlight the governor’s misfortune on a tech platform viewed as an emerging rival for conservative news. The homepage’s top article afterwards: “Much-Hyped Ron DeSantis Presidential Announcement a Disaster on Twitter,” with a splashy photo of Musk captioned “AMATEUR HOUR.”
When DeSantis finally went on, he delivered a low-key speech to the diminished audience before joining a podcast-like discussion with his hosts and handpicked friendly guests on topics like education, immigration, Bitcoin, and Twitter.
Ouch.
Team Trump has been taking numerous victory laps since Wednesday gloating at how badly the event started:
Trump’s allies reveled in the early missteps. “Glitchy. Tech issues. Uncomfortable silences. A complete failure to launch. And that’s just the candidate!” a Trump spokesperson texted amid the debacle.
The former president’s team also sent out a blitz of press releases targeting the Florida governor. Topics ranged from DeSantis’ past positions on Social Security and Medicare, his opposition to policies propping up ethanol, why he’d be “the wrong choice” for places like New Hampshire and Nevada, and much more.
As for the actual substance of what DeSantis said, there wasn’t much in terms of a new direction announced for his campaign or any direct attacks on Donald Trump. Perhaps that was as intended since the Twitter Spaces format was risky, to begin with.
DeSantis has been plagued in recent months with claims that he lacks the “presidential charisma” needed to connect with voters face-to-face and sway them toward supporting him.
He has been immensely popular in Florida where he reached the height of approval after winning re-election by 20 points in November. Since that time, he’s had challenges translating statewide popularity into the engine needed for a national presidential run.
The Twitter Spaces announcement is being called a “mistake” and a “disaster” even by DeSantis-friendly commentators like Erick Erickson:
“It was bold. It turned out to be a mistake,” radio host Erick Erickson emailed supporters about the mishap. “It is recoverable. But it is a reminder that some things should be under full control of the candidate, particularly the launch day.”
But in corners of the conservative press, including outlets pining for an alternative to Trump, there was little willingness to sidestep the face plant. The National Review’s Philip Klein called it a “disaster.”
The big question is whether the Twitter Spaces debacle announcement will matter in a week or a month.
What DeSantis sacrificed by making an announcement in an audio-only venue ripe with problems was the video clips and soundbites being played for days afterward. This is the time to put your best foot forward in a flashy and friendly environment and make your case. That simply did not happen.
By all accounts, the message delivered on Wednesday during the announcement was continually described as “robotic” and “rehearsed,” two adjectives DeSantis has been unable to escape for the past few months.
Furthermore, as others have pointed out, standing in a room with the likes of Elon Musk makes it hard to catch any air. Despite his popularity, DeSantis is no Elon Musk.
On the other hand, DeSantis did manage to raise over $8 million after his technically-challenged launch so maybe not all is lost.
