Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ Twitter campaign launch got off to a bad start Wednesday and didn’t improve much over time. Marred by technical glitches, some of the kindest complaints described the event as “uninspired,” “not ready for the big-time,” and “dull.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) even got on the DeSantis-bashing bandwagon, declaring that more people tuned in once to watch her play a video game online.
The sad thing about AOC trolling DeSantis is that she was actually correct.
DeSantis opted to do a Twitter Spaces audio announcement, rather than an in-person campaign event. There were about 500,000 people listening to the announcement in the first Twitter Spaces event, which is basically like a Skype call with no video. When that Twitter Spaces crashed, a second Twitter Spaces had to be launched to even hold the announcement event. More than half of the listeners at the first location didn’t bother tuning back in.
By the time DeSantis finally got around to making his announcement, only 300,000 were listening. Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, “We had more people join when I played Among Us,” referring to some video game she played on a livestream one time.
That’s a true statement. AOC had approximately 435,000 people tune in just to watch her play a video game. During DeSantis’ announcement, as there were 303,000 people listening, Donald Trump’s campaign spokesman Steven Cheung tweeted, “More people watch CNN than DeSantis’ Twitter Space.”
Ouch! The internet was quickly flooded with jokes about launching a presidential campaign on ham radio, and the hashtag #DeSaster started trending on Twitter. Hindsight 20/20, Team DeSantis’ decision to launch an audio-only campaign event was a poor one. Many on the right were expecting DeSantis to make a legitimate primary challenge against Donald Trump. But based on how things are going so far, it looks like Trump will be walking away with the GOP nomination.
