Array
Ron DeSantis’ campaign launch fizzled like one of Elon Musk’s early rocket prototypes.
The Florida governor has been preparing for months to run for president, but his official campaign launch committed a cardinal political sin – offering his opponents, especially ex-President Donald Trump, an opening to turn him into an object of ridicule.
First, DeSantis made the unorthodox choice to make his long-awaited run official not among regular voters, but on a Twitter Spaces audio stream alongside Musk, the billionaire owner of the social media platform, which meant the biggest moment in his political career played out through a disembodied voice.
Worse, the launch interview was delayed and plagued by glitches. The cliche that the best day of any presidential candidate’s campaign is when they first announce will not apply to DeSantis, who managed to obliterate his own message. And even when the event got up and running, it felt more like a fan fest for Musk, as various conservative opinion leaders called in to boost DeSantis but seemed more effusive about his host.
“It came across like he was a talk radio host not the future leader of the free world,” former Trump administration communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
If DeSantis is to beat Trump, who roughly doubled him up 53% to 26% in a new CNN poll of the GOP race released on Wednesday, he will have to run an almost perfect campaign. So his halting launch was hardly a promising start, especially since it undermined his core message that he has the kind of discipline and focus that could make his presidency far more successful than Trump’s term.
The former president’s allies – who mounted savage weeks of attacks on the former Trump protégé, whom he clearly believes is his biggest primary threat – could barely contain glee at the fiasco that overtook DeSantis’ big moment.
“Ron DeSantis’ botched campaign announcement is another example of why he is just not ready for the job. The stakes are too high and the fight to save America is too critical to gamble on a first-timer who is clearly not ready for prime time,” said Karoline Leavitt, spokeswoman for the Trump-aligned Make America Great Again PAC.
Even President Joe Biden’s campaign got in on the act, tweeting out a link to his fundraising machine, which, it quipped, worked – unlike the DeSantis audio stream.
DeSantis made an attempt to spin away the fiasco by releasing a video boasting that he “broke the internet” because so many people were excited to tune into hear him on Twitter Spaces.
But by handing a rival as ruthless as Trump an early gift, which will no doubt be retold in increasingly withering and humiliating versions by the great showman in his coming campaign rallies, DeSantis is guilty of a major error – one that is especially surprising since his aides had months to choreograph his first official move on the national stage. He is now under immediate pressure to change the narrative lest the chaotic events on Wednesday become a metaphor for his campaign.
