Roger Kimball

Twitter troubles weren’t the only problem with DeSantis’s launch

Free tickets to Disney World: maybe that’s what Ron the aspiring Don should give to the clever staffer who thought of having him announce his candidacy for POTUS on Twitter Spaces. 

It was only the official announcement, of course. But having him unfold the bulletin on Twitter Spaces, in an unscripted chat with Elon Musk, was supposed to transform a rote, ho-hum, so-what-I-already-knew-that non-event into a media happening. When I last checked, Tucker Carlson’s ‘We’re Back’ Twitter clip had garnered more than 132 million views (take that, Fox). How did Ron do?

From where I and some friends sat, it was more or less like the Thresher’s final voyage. Or maybe like one of SpaceX’s rapid unscheduled disassemblies. Some words from Elon and co-host David Sacks. Elsewhere on Spaces someone opined that this was the funeral for the ‘corporate press’. Then came the deep dive. Garbled sounds. Elon said that so many people were on that the servers were melting.

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