Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was set to announce his 2024 presidential campaign on a Twitter Space with Elon Musk today, but Twitter itself had other ideas.
The product, which allows livestreamed group voice chats, cut out quickly after going live at 3PM PT. The audio glitched in and out, at times only playing reverb noises along with some distorted speech. At the time of writing, there were 580,000 listeners in the Twitter space, which was set to be hosted by venture capitalist and Musk ally David Sacks.
Twitter has been beset by technical issues since Musk took over last last year, gutting its staff and slashing the company’s expenses. By 3:20PM PT, TechCrunch observed that the live audio session was only available as a recording.
Update: By 3:30PM PT, an alternative Twitter Space with a live Ron DeSantis was up and running, though it only attracted a fraction of the listener base that tuned in to the original announcement. In the new Twitter Space, DeSantis secured his big campaign kick off moment, albeit to a reduced audience. “I am running for President of the United States to lead our great American comeback,” DeSantis said.
The Florida governor launched into a stump speech that set a grim tone for his campaign — one that echoed former President Trump’s divisive inaugural address in January 2017, right down to his decision to use the word “carnage” in reference to violence in cities like Baltimore and Chicago.
“We know our country’s going in the wrong direction — we see it with our eyes, and we feel it in our bones,” DeSantis said. “Our southern borders collapse, drugs are pouring into the country, our cities are being hollowed out by spiking crime, the federal government’s making it harder for the average family to make ends meet and to attain and maintain a middle class lifestyle, and our president, [who] lacks vigor, flounders in the face of our nation’s challenges and he takes his cues from the woke mob.”
DeSantis kicked off his campaign in friendly company with Musk. Twitter’s new owner, also prone to denouncing all things “woke,” previously said that he would support the governor in a bid for the presidency. DeSantis shunned more traditional routes for kicking off a campaign when he opted for the Twitter Space with Musk, apparently paying the price of that decision by having a big moment marred by technical difficulties.