Ron DeSantis campaign announcement in Twitter Spaces session with Elon Musk plagued by technical glitches

By Mike Murphy

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made his 2024 presidential run official Wednesday, but his kickoff announcement on Twitter was plagued by technical glitches.

DeSantis announced his candidacy in a roughly minute-long Twitter video Wednesday, ahead of a Twitter Spaces discussion with Twitter owner Elon Musk. But the audio stream for the event, scheduled to start at 6 p.m. Eastern time, repeatedly crashed, making it virtually impossible for most people to follow in real time.

Entrepreneur and investor David Sacks, who moderated the event, said the number of people trying to join the livestream was "melting the servers," and Musk admitted they were being "strained." At one point, about 500,000 people were trying to listen in.

"You can tell by the mistakes that it's real," Musk said at one point.

Critics on Twitter and elsewhere observed that significantly more people have attended similar online events in the past with no technological breakdowns and that nearly as many people tuned in to a live stream of Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez playing the game "Among Us" on the Twitch platform in 2020.

Musk has fired or laid off about 80% of Twitter's employees since buying the company last year and closed one of its key data centers, leading critics to warn that Twitter crashes are now much more likely.

Also see: As DeSantis launches his campaign, here are the Republicans running for president in 2024

Musk canceled the original Spaces after about 20 minutes of glitches and started a new one. The Spaces appeared to be working better by 7 p.m. Eastern, with about 280,000 listeners, though there were still some complaints about audio dropping out.

The livestream ended after about an hour, with Sacks saying, "It's not how you started, it's how you finish, and we finished strong."

DeSantis later appeared on Fox News for an interview, with host Trey Gowdy, a former House Republican, quipping: "I can't promise that I won't crash, but Fox News will not crash during this interview." In that interview, DeSantis claimed the server overload was proof of his popularity.

Rivals mocked DeSantis's tech problems. "This is a disaster," senior Trump adviser Chris LaCivita tweeted after, he said, being was kicked off the Spaces feed three times. He later called it "a clown show." Donald Trump Jr. tweeted "#DeSaster."

Even President Joe Biden piled on, tweeting a fund-raising link from his personal account and saying, "This link works."

-Mike Murphy

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05-25-23 0749ET

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