Trump taunts DeSantis over glitch-ridden 2024 launch on Twitter Spaces with Elon Musk
It wasn’t long after Governor Ron DeSantis’ 2024 tech-stricken kickoff on Twitter that former President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to mock his political rival.
Just before 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Trump wrote a bizarre message aimed at DeSantis, but which also included his relationship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
“Rob,” My red button is bigger, better, stronger and works (TRUTH!), yours isn’t! (according to my conversation with Kim Jung Un, from North Korea, who will soon be my boyfriend!),” Trump wrote, seemingly deliberately calling the governor by the wrong first name.
The former president was quick to take the fight by mocking the less-than-smooth start to the announcement of Ron DeSantis’ Twitter Spaces campaign
Leading up to DeSantis’ planned announcement, Trump posted two videos on Truth Social attacking the Florida governor.
In the first, Trump takes credit for DeSantis’ first gubernatorial victory and positions the politician as a MAGA traitor.
The second video pushes Ron DeSantis as a member of the established class of politicians, stating that Trump is the only candidate capable of taking on established forces, as well as China and other US adversaries.
Former first son Donald Trump Jr. sent one tweet of an article that labeled DeSantis’s announcement a failure. He had previously tweeted, “DeSantis makes JEB! look energetic now.”
The much-anticipated launch of DeSantis’ presidential campaign started off without a bang, as the Twitter spaces he was supposed to visit with Elon Musk started 26 minutes late after major outages.
Musk at one point said the “servers were tense” and the host blamed the number of people tuning in, which he said was a “good thing.”
‘Just try to get it going’, listeners could hear when it became clear that the frustration was growing.
Moderator David Sacks, a tech entrepreneur close to Musk, started the conversation by claiming that DeSantis was doing a “social media first” by “making history” with the announcement.
However, the event is more likely to be remembered for its series of glitches.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis officially entered the 2024 Republican presidential primary on Wednesday night with a Twitter Spaces thread malfunctioning for about half an hour before the announcement could be made official
Don Jr. sent out a handful of tweets mocking the technical issues
When the event finally got off the ground, DeSantis confirmed to the CEO of Tesla and Twitter that just hours after filing the proper paperwork necessary to bid for the White House, he participated in the Republican presidential primary.
“Thanks for putting up with these technical issues, we’re definitely breaking new ground here,” Sacks said as the event kicked off. “As far as I know, no major presidential candidate has ever announced his candidacy on social media in this way.”
During the call, DeSantis was able to promote his presidential platform as an official candidate for the first time to an audience of sometimes around 300,000 people.
DeSantis also took a veiled swipe at Trump by claiming he will end the recent Republican “culture of losing.”
Just an hour before the video was released, Trump got another swipe at the man believed to be his main competitor.
“I would like to personally congratulate ‘Rob’ DeSanctimonious on finally announcing his entry into the race for President of the United States,” he wrote.
“Hopefully he will get the full experience of being attacked by the Marxists, Communists and radical left madmen of our country, without whom he will never know what work he is doing.”
Trump added, “These Lowlifes & Misfits are much worse than the leaders of hostile foreign countries. They must be soundly defeated to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Prior to the campaign season, Trump and DeSantis had a good working relationship. Trump now claims he’s the reason DeSantis ever became successful and Florida governor betrayed him by running
Trump currently still has a commanding lead over DeSantis — and all other Republican challengers of 2024
In response to the messy start to the Twitter Spaces announcement, Democratic National Committee spokesman Ammar Moussa said in a statement, “In true Ron DeSantis fashion, his presidential launch was literally not ready for primetime. Welcome to the race for MAGA base, Ron!’
DeSantis is largely seen as the only candidate Trump could run for his money in the 2024 primary.
But Trump still has a commanding lead over DeSantis — and all other Republican challengers of 2024.
The former president has an outright majority and leads the field with support of 53 percent of Republicans in the latest CNN/SSRS poll released Wednesday, making his voter support double that of DeSantis’ 26 percent support.