Elon Musk and Ron DeSantis’s live Twitter Space, in which the Florida Governor was set to announce his run for president, suffered repeated technical failures on Wednesday.
David Sacks, the tech investor who hosted the event on Musk’s account, looked on the bright side as the feed cut in and out, “so many people here that I think we are. We are kind of melting the servers, which is a good sign.” The Twitter Space cut out three times on Sacks before eventually shutting down after some 20 minutes of silence and technical failures.
Shortly after, the room popped back up on Sacks’ account, where things ran smoothly. Musk said his account drew too much interest, netting over seven hundred thousand listeners. Sacks later agreed, claiming it had to do with Musk’s very high follower count, something Musk confirmed. The final space on Sacks’ account reached roughly 300 thousand simultaneous listeners.
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DeSantis made an official announcement before the Twitter event failure by dropping a video on his Twitter account. “We need the courage to lead and the strength to win,” DeSantis said in the clip. “I’m Ron DeSantis, and I’m running for president to lead our great American comeback.”
I’m running for president to lead our Great American Comeback. pic.twitter.com/YmkWkLaVDg
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) May 24, 2023
Many of the phrases in this first campaign stinger were echoed in the Governor’s brief introductory announcement, in which he spent most of the time touting his record of policies and results. Most notably, however, DeSantis took one of the boldest swipes at Trump yet. The Governor insisted victory is the most important and solemnly promised to win the presidency if given the Republican nomination. “No excuses,” he said, contrasting himself with Trump’s blaming of election interference for the 2020 loss.
The rest of the Twitter space consisted of Q and A between DeSantis and various prominent individuals, including Musk, Sacks, and Representative Thomas Massie.
During the talk, DeSantis lauded Florida school children’s test scores, especially among black children, to contrast against media narratives about his school agenda. In that vein, the Governor called media narratives around “book bans” in schools a “farce,” mentioning the sexually explicit content in books removed from schools and noting that no books have been banned from anything other than public schools. He even gave one example of the media framing Miami-Dade moving a book from an elementary school library to a middle school library as “book banning” to show his point.
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DeSantis hit on a bevy of other issues, including claims Florida school curriculum ignores slavery and an NAACP travel advisory warning of danger for minorities in the Sunshine State, both claims DeSantis scoffed at, noting the continuing popularity of Florida as a vacation location and emphasizing what the curriculum actually is. The Governor also mentioned fentanyl coming over the southern border, which is lacing many other common drugs killing Americans, calling it a “Day One issue.”
In one of the most critical questions of the night, talk show host Steve Deace asked DeSantis, essentially, why one should believe DeSantis’s campaign promises and tweets, again alluding to Trump, especially his promise of victory. DeSantis again leaned on his record, later proposing using leverage on Mexico to solve the border crisis that has not yet been utilized.
“I think even my worst critics in Florida will acknowledge…I don’t make promises or say I’m going to do something lightly. I’ve thought it through, and I know I’m going to follow through…. Number two, I understand the different leverage points that you would have under article two of the Constitution, I studied that a lot, becoming governor about Florida’s constitution. Doing the same thing for the federal Constitution, you gotta know how to use your leverage to advance what you’re trying to accomplish.”
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