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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made it official Wednesday and announced his campaign for president. He filed the papers and even signed the law that lets him run while still remaining governor. (That same rule was why DeSantis’s Democratic opponent last year, Rep. Charlie Crist, resigned his seat, which freshman Republican Anna Paulina Luna flipped.)
But this post isn’t about how corrupt and awful DeSantis is. Well, it isn’t just about that. Chief Twitter troll Elon Musk held a gala in-kind donation event for DeSantis on Twitter Spaces Wednesday at 6 p.m. ET (ish). The major news outlets had already reported that DeSantis was running, so there was zero anticipation around this conversation between the two most awkward men on the planet. FYI: The average Republican primary voter is 65 years old, doesn’t have a college degree, and has no idea what Twitter Spaces is. But I’m sure this wasn’t a waste of time.
The event started off like Christopher Durang’s The Actor’s Nightmare, as performed by Elon Musk. People kept disappearing, including DeSantis (but not permanently, alas). Musk vamped for a while about why Spaces wasn’t working. Great way to sell your product (and candidate)!
PREVIOUSLY:
Ron ‘Chuckles’ DeSantis Running For Silver Medal In Republican Presidential Primary
Two Horrible People To Do Twitter Thing Tonight So One Of Them Can Not Be President, Don’t Miss THAT
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Ron DeSantis: What If We Killed More People, Harder?
Musk at one point said, “I’m very excited to have Gov. DeSantis make this … ” Then dead air for several seconds. He’d barely started and was already going up on his lines. Serving as Musk’s willing accomplice for this event was Republican donor and Silicon Valley creep David Sacks, who had to remind Musk to mute his speaker like he’s his granddad.
Hitler was not actually there (we’re unsure about Dick Cheney), but somebody made an actually clever picture for Donald Trump to truth out.
When the Spaces campaign rally finally began 26 minutes late, we were subjected to DeSantis and Musk’s voices in stereo. You’d think not seeing their faces would be an improvement but your ears really took a hit. DeSantis first flattered himself with lies about how he stood up to the federal government and the media regarding how he governed during the pandemic. He claimed he didn’t follow the crowd and defied lockdowns, et al., but he issued a stay-at-home order in April 2020. He closed bars and restaurants. He insists he was “alone” when reopening the state, but Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp started re-opening businesses in April. DeSantis started lifting restrictions en masse around the same time as many other Republican governors. We could argue that he was more reckless than everyone else, but that’s hard when Kristi Noem exists. The South Dakota governor was one of the few who never issued a stay-at-home order.
DeSantis spoke for a while about how much he values the First Amendment, thus proving there’s no God because he wasn’t immediately reduced to ash. That’s when he started flattering Musk as a free speech champion and brilliant businessman, who will definitely make money off Twitter someday very soon! (Musk has admitted in a leaked memo that Twitter is now worth less than half of the $44 billion he “paid” for it.)
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie joined to swoon over DeSantis and tell Musk that he owns a Tesla, likely tanking its stock.
Musk also stressed the importance of Twitter as an objective, even-handed platform where every voice is treated equally, especially the Nazis. (Musk has not hosted Spaces for any other candidate’s launch.) Then came some softball questions that I am too bored to translate here. DeSantis warned us to “buckle up” because he was going to change how the federal government operates, which is the sort of boilerplate crap you hear from bland candidates. Friendly guests offered him the opportunity to bash the NAACP — a “left-wing group” — for calling out his blatantly racist policies, and to pass the buck for costing Florida billions in Disney Dollars.
Twitter Spaces crashed a couple times during this mess, which is totally a result of everyone who ever lived everywhere all at once logging on to listen to DeSantis and probably had nothing to do with Musk firing most of the people who knew how to run the site. Musk’s own platform mocked him mercilessly, as #DeSaster starting trending.
Oh, and even Uncle Joe at the White House junction joined the roasting.
DeSantis did attract about 300,000 users to his Twitter Spaces old-time radio show announcement. That’s significantly fewer than the number of Republican primary voters who’ll eventually watch Donald Trump trash DeSantis on Sean Hannity’s show, and Trump can just call in from Mar-a-Lago.
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