Former US President, Donald Trump and his allies mocked Ron DeSantis Wednesday evening as the Florida governor’s hype chat with Elon Musk turned into a glitchy rollout of his presidential campaign.
Desanctis is seen as Trump’s major rival to clinch the Republican party’s presidential ticket. On Tuesday, his campaign team announced that on Wednesday he will launch his 2024 presidential run on Twitter in a Twitter Spaces event with Elon Musk.
On Wednesday, May 24, after nearly 30 minutes of struggling to connect to the Twitter Spaces event due to the high number of people on the site, DeSantis was able to continue with his presidential announcement and later a quasi-town hall with conservative media personalities and other allies.
Before then, both Musk and entrepreneur David Sacks could be overheard discussing what to do about glitches as the platform struggled to keep up with the number of users in the audio-only chat.
“We’ve got so many people here that I think we are kind of melting the servers,” Sacks said amid early struggles.
Seeing the struggles Desanctis faced, Trump knocked the Florida Governor.
“Wow! The DeSanctus TWITTER launch is a DISASTER! His whole campaign will be a disaster,” Trump wrote on Truth, his social media platform. “WATCH!”
Trump compared DeSantis’ struggles with Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, whose announcement was briefly sidetracked after his main microphone went down.
“Tim Scott’s Presidential launch, even with the broken microphone (don’t pay the contractor, Tim!), was by far the best Presidential launch of the week,” the former president wrote on Truth. Robs was a catastrophe!”
Trump also shared a video contrasting his own announcement at his Mar-a-Lago club with DeSantis’ poor start on Wednesday.
His son, Donald Trump Jr. deemed the evening a “#DeSaster.”
Trump and his allies also tried to make multiple comparisons between DeSantis and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. The former president infamously labeled Bush as “low energy” before overtaking him during the 2016 primaries.
“DeSantis is making JEB! look high energy right now,” Trump Jr. wrote on Twitter. While Trump’s campaign tweeted a graphic with DeSantis’ name next to an exclamation mark, reminiscent of Bush’s 2016 logo.
“DeSedative,” Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, once a close DeSantis ally, wrote on Twitter.
Trump’s team also posted a video mocking the live video of Desantis announcement. The mock video featured a mock Elon Musk, Desantis, mock Adolf Hitler, Mock devil and a mock Donald Trump that later appeared at the end of the call.
https://t.co/sy4I3TViHL pic.twitter.com/pbPJDPWLId
— Dan Scavino Jr.🇺🇸🦅 (@DanScavino) May 25, 2023
DeSantis’ team seemed unphased by the criticism, and posted an upbeat message on social media.
There was so much enthusiasm for Governor DeSantis’ vision for our Great American Comeback that he literally busted up the internet,” DeSantis press secretary Bryan Griffin wrote on Twitter. “Washington is next.”
