Florida Government Ron DeSantis just officially announced his campaign with Elon Musk in a Twitter Space rife with technical issues Wednesday.

The announcement ran into issues immediately after over half of a million Twitter users piled into the Space. DeSantis didn’t even have a chance to speak before it started to freeze as Musk and his team scrambled to fix the technical issues.

Elon Musk and DeSantis Love-in Falls Apart

Eventually they had to pull streaming it from the 140 million-followers Musk Twitter account and use David Sacks’ instead. An entrepreneur and author, Sacks is the co-founder of Craft Ventures :

Twitter users, such as Jordan Uhl with 241k followers, were quick to criticize the broadcast.

After 20 minutes of silence, apologies and random throat clearing sounds, Musk gave up on the first attempt at the Space and started a new one.

He said that he and DeSantis had “broken the internet.” The second attempt worked much better though it had less than half the listeners as the first.

If you weren’t on hand to watch is all go down in realtime, here’s a recording on YouTube, although there’s a lot of dead time, so you’ll have to skip through it to keep yourself entertained:

DeSantis Campaign Announcement or Twitter Ad?

Before DeSantis could make his announcement, Musk made sure to laud Twitter’s Spaces feature as a great tool for connecting political candidates to the masses. Eventually, DeSantis was able to give his campaign announcement.

Pundits like Saagar Enjeti were quick to lambast DeSantis’ decision to tie his campaign announcement so closely with Twitter.


Musk’s praise of Twitter made the broadcast sound like a Twitter ad to many listeners:

Despite the criticism, it was a still landmark because it was the first presidential campaign announcement (from a top candidate) to be launched on social media.

DeSantis said that he chose to announce via a Twitter Space because he wanted to go against the grain and support Musk’s (supposed) commitment to freedom of speech on the platform.

“Twitter was indeed expensive but free speech is priceless,” responded Elon Musk.

The announcement itself wasn’t altogether shocking. DeSantis criticized the current administration and even his own political party, mostly along the same lines as his previous criticisms.

The announcement was followed by a discussion between DeSantis, Musk, and other guests, moderated by Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor David Sacks.

Musk has been supportive of Republican politicians in the past but most consider this a step-up in his dealings in politics.

The verdict from liberal leaning MSNBC was predictable:

Remember that time Elon Musk unveiled the new Cybertruck, and when he went to demonstrate the vehicle’s supposedly “bulletproof glass,” two of the windows smashed? The Twitter rollout of the Ron DeSantis campaign went kinda like that.

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