Ron DeSantis’s campaign for president launched Wednesday night with glitchy mic checks on Twitter, long silent pauses, and space-age electronic music.
For the Florida Governor, whose principle pitch to Republicans is being a more effective implementer of Donald Trump’s right-wing agenda, it was a disastrous opening night.
More than 600,000 Twitter users waited through 15 minutes of glitches to hear the widely promoted conversation between DeSantis and Twitter owner Elon Musk. Eventually, DeSantis launched into a pre-written campaign speech in which he accused President Joe Biden of taking his cues from “the woke mob” and said American decline is “not inevitable.”
Then he made his pitch for why voters should back him. He called for “economic sanity” and denounced “inflationary policies that hurt working people” and pledged to “bring the administrative state to heel.” He promised to “shut down the border and construct a board wall.”
Following that list of boiled-over Trumpisms, DeSantis took a swipe at former President Donald Trump’s leadership of the GOP. “We must end the culture of losing that has infected the Republican Party in recent years,” DeSantis said. “We must look forward, not backwards.”
Some of DeSantis’ rivals were quick to mock the technical difficulties. President Joe Biden tweeted “This link works” with a link to a page to donate to his campaign Republican Asa Hutchinson, a former Arkansas Governor who recently launched a 2024 campaign, tweeted a similar joke with a donation link.
This is a breaking news story that will be updated.
