Twitter Glitches: Elon Musk, Ron DeSantis Left Red Faced

MIAMI, (IANS) – Ending months of speculation, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis finally launched his bid for the 2024 US presidential election on Twitter, but the livestream event was delayed following technical glitches.

The livestream was held on Twitter Spaces and hosted by the platform’s outgoing CEO Elon Musk and David Sacks — a tech entrepreneur and major political donor who contributed just over $70,000 to the 44-year-old Republican Governor’s political committee in 2021.

For Musk it looked like an easy win in his effort to make Twitter the public square, especially one that attracts rightwing blowhards and steals a march on Fox News. For DeSantis it seemed like a chance to make a bit of political history, show off his tech savvy and poke his rival Donald Trump, once the undisputed world tweeting champion, The Guardian commented. But that did not happen.

As more than 500,000 logged in on May 24 to join the Governor declare his bid for the White House, the audio was cut out even before he could say a word.

Almost 20 minutes of glitches followed, before he could finally make his announcement.

“I am running for President of the United States to lead our great American comeback,” DeSantis said, once the sound was stabilized. By the time his speech began in earnest, hundreds of thousands of Twitter users had left the platform. When the event was relaunched using Sacks’ account, only around 250,000 users ultimately listened in.

DeSantis’ team worked quickly to spin the technical stumbles, writing on Twitter that the announcement “broke the internet with so much excitement”, and posting a link to the campaign website.

But the phrase “Failure to Launch” was trending on Twitter itself.  Both, Donald Trump and Joe Biden scored on the flop and gleefully raised funds.