BREAKING: Twitter glitches plague Ron DeSantis’ much-hyped presidential announcement with Elon Musk. https://t.co/1Pa8OliZPO
— CNBC (@CNBC) May 24, 2023
‘DeSaster’ was trending on twitter, which isn’t searchable any more without a twitter membership, but here’s the first of what I expect to be a spate of news reports…
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign announcement plans were derailed Wednesday evening by massive technical glitches on Twitter that kept him from declaring his candidacy.
“Servers are straining somewhat,” Elon Musk, Twitter’s owner, was heard saying on the app’s live audio stream where he and DeSantis were supposed to have a conversation that included the governor’s first verbal announcement of his White House bid.
Musk’s comment came in between crashes, feedback glitches and audio failures that prevented the conversation on Twitter’s Spaces feature from beginning for around 25 minutes past its scheduled 6 p.m. ET start time.
Musk and investor David Sacks, an ally of both men, started a new Twitter Spaces webcast after the original one failed. But technical issues popped in that stream, too, including in the middle of DeSantis’ remarks…
The aborted first Spaces event listed more than half a million listeners before it was abandoned completely.
The botched event came as Musk pushes to boost Twitter’s revenue…
President Joe Biden’s official Twitter account, meanwhile, used the opportunity to ask for contributions to his reelection campaign.
“This link works,” Biden tweeted with a URL linking to his ActBlue donation page.
War for Ukraine Day 455: A Brief Update Tonight
Suzanne
LMMFAO.
Scout211
cain
@Scout211: AOC wins.. fatality!
Zzyzx
What if Ron DeSantis is secretly doing a Producers-esque scam to try to help the Democrats and he’s as surprised as everyone that getting increasingly over the top isn’t enough? Maybe the incompetence is the next step. It would be irresponsible to not speculate.
geg6
Biden’s coms team is en fuego.
Baud
I like that. Hope it sticks.
M31
The richest guy in the world
The great White-booted Hope of the GOP
MTG, the voice of the House
our “betters” are a bunch of sad limp no-talent clowns with the charisma of bathtub soap scum
Baud
He should try again in a Tesla because it’ll probably crash too.
Then, of course, on a SpaceX rocket.
M31
with all due apologies to bathtub soap scum, which at least means somebody got their greasy sweat coating washed off
Dan B
Some former Twitter employees are laughing.
I am also.
Scout211
Best comment yet, from boing boing
Baud
Someone wants the role of Sean Spicer in the DeSantis administration.
dmsilev
Apparently firing 90% of the workforce and requiring most of the rest to work 20 hours a day is not a long-term path to success. Who knew? Besides “everyone”, that is.
OzarkHillbilly
Maybe, just maybe, there really is a kind and merciful God.
scav
The largest group that ever met online? Another retread!! Let’s check the unedited park service photographs about that.
Circular Reasoning
@Zzyzx: There were similar sentiments about Trump during his first run. I’m choosing to go with “when they show you who they are, believe them the first time”.
dmsilev
@Scout211: “crashes, feedback glitches and audio failures” could just as well describe the Starship launch attempt/fiasco. I mean, the “audio failure” was “sound loud enough to destroy the concrete launch pad”, but surely someone can screech loudly enough into a microphone to approximate that.
Baud
OzarkHillbilly
@M31: My soap scum is still better than that. It is at least the result of an honest day’s work.
Splitting Image
@Zzyzx:
There is a longstanding theory that this is exactly what the orange thing was doing in 2016 (although not so much to help the Democrats as himself), and he was as surprised as anyone when he found himself in the White House.
Even if every G.O.P. candidate going forward is in it simply to grift the flock for the campaign donations, Democrats can’t be confident that they won’t repeat 2016. There are at least 74 million morons out there eager to have their money stolen from them and that is enough to for a venom-spewing crook to win.
Suzanne
@OzarkHillbilly: Or maybe there’s a smug, smirking bastard.
I kinda hope it’s the latter….might improve my odds.
Sure Lurkalot
Isn’t Fucker Tucker’s new show supposed to be on Twitter? Looking forward to another stellar launch!
Anne Laurie
Also, too: Gods come and go, but Murphy the Trickster God RULES!
Wilson Heath
Twitter Spaces—duh, of course the tech was gonna fizzle and sputter out if not outright explode.
Bex
@OzarkHillbilly: And She was watching Tina Turner videos along with the rest of us. Simply The Best.
OzarkHillbilly
IOWs, a kind and merciful God.
Not that I believe in such, but a man can dream, can’t he?
OzarkHillbilly
@Anne Laurie: YES!
OzarkHillbilly
@Bex: I’m not very happy right now, she and I had a deal: I go first.
Splitting Image
I’ve been reading that Fox News is not doing so well and that the howler monkeys are deserting it for better venues, one of which is Elon Musk’s Twitter.
I can see how long-time Twitter users are sad to see the platform decline, but I don’t think that the howler monkeys are going to be happy with the trade for very long. Whatever else you could say about Fox, it just worked, you know? You could set the TV to Fox and it would sit there all day, spreading the gospel of tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation to everyone who happened to see it.
Twitter is not going to just work the way Fox did. Not with Musk in charge. The longer he runs it, the more he is going to be a poster child for why you don’t put a right-wing manbaby in charge of anything.
bbleh
@Bex: lol, along with most MSM. As noted elsewhere, I think she would have been very happy booting him off the headlines.
Baud
@Splitting Image:
Yeah I think a lot of Fox viewing is passive. It’s on in the background.
Suzanne
@Splitting Image: Also… old people watch Fox. Old people are not the Twitter user base. They’re not going to be able to make fetch happen! It’s not going to happen!
lgerard
I am the only one who thinks that DeSantis looks like Alfred E Neuman?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Splitting Image:
@Baud:
@Suzanne:
I think a lot of Fox viewers have fled to places like Newsmax too in protest of Tucker Carlson’s firing
Wyatt Salamanca
Ron DeSantis is a trillion times dumber than I had originally thought possible. Who convinced this moron that a Twitter announcement was a better way to begin his campaign run than a traditional rally with thousands of Florida residents wildly cheering him on?
Trump will cut this guy to ribbons before he knows what hit him.
geg6
@lgerard:
Hey! Alfred E. Newman had cute freckles and a very human smile. Take that back!
Scout211
Nope, it’s all over the internet.
Correction: deleted the comment about Trump using that as an insult for DeSantis. He actually used it for then-Mayor Pete.
geg6
@Wyatt Salamanca:
Inorite? Unbelievable.
mrmoshpotato
SAD!
different-church-lady
Christ, I had no idea there were that many political reporters in this country.
different-church-lady
@Splitting Image:
If there was a wins-above-replacement (WAR) stat for media, Twitter would be deep in the negative in that deal.
different-church-lady
@Scout211:
Blew up the launchpad too.
James E Powell
This Joe Biden guy is really moving up my list of all time favorite politicians.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
They still haven’t ironed out the glitches in DeathSantis’s animatronics
dmsilev
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: In retrospect, pissing off Disney was a bad idea all around.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Failure to Launch
Scout211
In case you were all super worried that DeSantis was announcing his candidacy illegally, DeSantis signs law clearing his path to run for president while governor
So its all good now, right? *GLITCH!* Smooth sailing. *GLITCH!* Full speed ahead. [8.5 minutes of silence] *SCREECH!*
All good!
Mai Naem mobile
@Scout211: sounds quite trumpian. Yuuugest evah!
Jackie
@Sure Lurkalot: Faux is laughing and high fiving each other; they were miffed Pudd’n Boots didn’t announce with them.
Faux is also gleefully hoping Tucker proceeds with his Twitter show.
different-church-lady
@Jackie: Fox right now is wondering if the elbow is the pointy one or the round one.
J.
BWAHAHAHA
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Dark Brandon throwing shade at Twitter:
Jackie
@different-church-lady: Ha!
Scout211
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): OMG! Warn a person! Need brain bleach!
Added: but funny!
Jeffro
SO…looks like we might not need trumpov’s secret plan to end the war in Ukraine after all! (whew)
That was a close one. I was just about ready to switch parties and go all-in for Peacemaker Extraordinaire Donny J Olive Branch LOLOLOL
Prigozhin says war in Ukraine has backfired, might lead to Russian revolution
SAY WHAT?!?!
So…to win…Russians just need to work harder, like they do in North Korea. Got it!!
Let’s please ask our snooze media to see what trumpov, DeSaster think about this revoltin’ (literally!! LOL) development!
NotMax
“I tawt I saw a Twitty crash.”
//
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
I can actually see the resemblance. But no insult, Alfred E Neuman is an American icon.
Jackie
David Frum, a Never Trump conservative who once served as a speechwriter to President George W. Bush, tweeted, “Failure to Launch: The Ron DeSantis Story.”
I guess Frum is also a Never DeSantis conservative!
Geminid
This campaign launch has people yucking it up on Twitter. The best wisecrack I’ve see so far is, “Maybe DeSantis got pudding on the mike.”
But the funniest comments are from the Republican DeSantis boosters trying to make chicken salad out of chicken shit.
NotMax
Did both Twitter and DeSantis have to reboot?
//
Miss Bianca
@Scout211: ok, that was a LOL for sure.
It’s a good day to be a Democrat!
Our enemies have made themselves more ridiculous than I could have dared hope, and our elected officials are having fun with it.
Baud
@Miss Bianca:
Gotta savor the good moments when we can.
Baud
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Agreed.
Jager
@Baud:
They left for dinner in a Tesla, the self-driving drove the car into the back of a trump supporter’s flag draped pickup. The Tesla caught fire and is burning with the doors locked.
Omnes Omnibus
Questions have been asked.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Jeffro: Sheds a different light on that town Russia was going to build for MAGA folks to emigrate to.
eclare
@Miss Bianca:
It is a GREAT day to be a Democrat!
Jackie
Morning Joe is gonna be lit tomorrow. I rarely watch it live, as it starts at 3 a.m. my time, but almost every night I wake up for a potty break at approx that time, so I maybe watch 15 mins before going back to sleep – unless they’re all busting a gut about something and keep me awake a bit longer… commercial break does the job to put me back to sleep.
Alison Rose
I still can’t get over the fact that this POS is only two years older than me. My entire life, I’ve always been assumed to be younger than my age, but I feel like in my 40s that’s kind of caught up with me…except Puddin’ Fingers easily looks like he has a decade on me, at a minimum.
Frankensteinbeck
@Scout211:
This took me a minute to process, because 100,000 logging on to take part is gobsmacking big. But they’re not taking part, are they? It’s 100,000 logging on to watch, and I’m pretty sure there have been streams with watchers in the millions before. Actually, Twitter struggling with 100,000 listening to an audio stream is… sad.
Jeffro
Biden/Harris campaign email just a bit ago:
I’m feeling like this Dem team just might be okay no matter who they face next fall! =)
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
It should have handled 100K or even 500K easily.
schrodingers_cat
@Frankensteinbeck: You can ask for a mic to ask your question and the host will unmute you. So it is somewhat interactive.
Spaces that I have attended have been typically between 50 to 500 people.
Lehrjet
@NotMax: Bravisimo, nicely done!
Jackie
WASHINGTON — No one liked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign launch more than former President Donald Trump.
“Wow. The DeSanctus TWITTER launch is a DISASTER!” Trump wrote on the Truth Social media platform. “His whole campaign will be a disaster. WATCH!”
Schadenfreude — the German word for taking pleasure in another’s failure — might understate the glee Trump and his team felt as DeSantis’ glitch-ridden Twitter audio-chat with billionaire SpaceX founder Elon Musk failed to lift off for about 20 minutes.
As hundreds of thousands of listeners logged off, Trump allies shared images to represent their excitement: a glass of wine and a laughing-to-tears emoji among them. Trump quickly posted a video to Truth Social that showed contrasting images of his boisterous campaign announcement last year and a Twitter screen showing the DeSantis discussion “Preparing to launch.”
But Trump advisers also used the moment to argue that the foul-up was reflective of DeSantis and his operation on the whole.
“Glitchy. Tech issues. Uncomfortable silences. A complete failure to launch,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said. “And that’s just the candidate.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-team-trolls-ron-desantis-launch-rcna82446
Jeffro
@Jackie: settle in folks: GQP primary is gonna. be. LIT!
Frankensteinbeck
@Jackie:
DeSantis is the biggest political gift Trump could have been given. Bullying DeSantis greatly reduces Trump’s loser stink in front of his conservative audience.
Gvg
Explain how the owner of twitter can have technical issues but the non owner president doesn’t and can promise that confidently using the same platform. Does.that mean joes campaign, not the government, has employees that know more about how twitter works than twitter bosses chosen crew? Or does it mean twitter hates their boss…
Suzanne
@Frankensteinbeck:
It makes me think that the Michael Jackson eating popcorn gif will be in heavy rotation this election season.
Poe Larity
Is Baghdad Bob still alive? Maybe Musk can hire him.
Jeffro
@Frankensteinbeck: AND…and let’s not forget, having the GOP’s “please god give us ‘ *someone just as much of an asshole as trump minus the obvious corruption and insanity’ ” wing, such as it is, spend all this time and energy hoping that DeSantis would be their white knight…only to see him crash, burn, and crash again at this relatively late date…
…well, it’s gotta be extremely demoralizing, for one!
It also means they’re going to have to scramble and find/luck their way into/settle for some other ” *SJAMAAATMTOCAI” candidate, and hope that he/she can overtake trumpov before the primary votes start getting counted next year.
And that won’t be easy, because there are a ton of midgets in the GOP field right now, and exactly NONE of them can capture a majority of GOP primary voters or anything close to it at the moment.
What’s the R base going to do? Suddenly flock to Nikki Haley? Chris Christie? I don’t think so
ETA: *happy to take suggestions for a shorter descriptor here! “Not-trump but not ‘never trump’ ?”
Frankensteinbeck
@Gvg:
In this case, it means Biden is using the basic and most reliable Twitter function, while Musk is using a completely different, more demanding and fragile function. Aiming for the moon, Elon Musk crashes, while Biden just gets ‘er done. Appropriate.
Jackie
@Jeffro: I stocked up on popcorn at Costco Sat. I’m READY!!! 🍿
Sure Lurkalot
@Splitting Image:
Never subscribed to Twitter but I have followed a few feeds and since the Musking, the threads devolve into dick pics and “groomer” this and that almost immediately. It appears those folks are having a blast on Musk’s Twitter. I hope one of the copycats reaches critical mass with some new bells and whistles and the Twitterers end up in the echo chamber they feel safe in.
Jackie
@Jeffro: Whatever happened to Pompeo? Did he chicken out? Not that he offers anything different than those already running.
Sebastian
Hilarious in so many ways:
Twitter “we are ready to replace FOX!” (video streaming is an order of magnitude harder than audio, emerald-boy!) puking itself and Sacks trying to help and faceplanting, too. DeSantis’ hoping that Electro-Jesus will help his campaign and getting musked is probably the best. lol
Mike in NC
Everything I’m reading about DeSantis notes his inability to look people in the eye. What a common touch! Tomorrow we head to the Blue Ridge Mountains where our good friends settled after fleeing Tampa a few months ago. We’ll be laughing at him over martinis and some good weed.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Sebastian: Is this the service Tucker Carlson says he’s going to use? He must be drinking heavily tonight.
SFAW
@Splitting Image:
In 2016, I speculated to my (NYC-area) brother just such a thing. His comment re: Trump: “No, he’s just an asshole.” That was the last time I entertained such thoughts.
Sure Lurkalot
My mother would say, look at that punim!
S Cerevisiae
TFG dunking on Rhonda Santis is just so much fun, I am rooting for injuries!
zhena gogolia
@Jeffro: That’s very sinister.
scav
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Maybe maybe not. Fox done stripped his home studio so he’s nowhere near ready for his closeup yet.
Scout211
Yes, he did. Last month he announced he would not run for president in 2024.
Frankensteinbeck
@Jackie:
Yes. He withdrew without doing anything. Speculation I saw was that he couldn’t get big donor funding.
@Sure Lurkalot:
Which is what Musk wanted and I wish people would just leave and stop enabling him. Ultimately, that is not my decision to make for others. I know the arguments for and against, and worry leaving hurt me professionally.
Expatchad Putin has become Stalin, the destroyer of worlds
@lgerard: More like that eggplant over there…
Alison Rose
@Sure Lurkalot: She would???? “Punim” means like, a cute little baby face. At least, that’s how everyone in my family/Jewish circles uses it.
zhena gogolia
@Alison Rose: I thought it just meant “face,” for better or worse.
Shana
We’re finishing up a road trip from DC to Philly to Champaign to Chicago to Cincinnati to the KY bourbon trail and I’ve seen a lot of billboards. Guys I’m worried about Cracker Barrel. They have a bunch of them all over promoting Brunch all Day with a picture of a plate of eggs benedict. I think they’re woke. If even Cracker Barrel is woke is there any hope for the rest of America?
Roberto el oso
@Jeffro: They can start by rationing vodka. That always works …
Jeffro
@zhena gogolia: my best (but mostly uninformed) guess is that Prigozhin knows that the longer the war goes on, the more likely it is that Putin gets overthrown. Russia’s not going to rally. They are in all likelihood going to get pushed back this summer and suffer all kinds of attacks within Russia itself. Complete humiliation.
So he’s teeing off, because he can see it’s kind of do-or-die time and they’re likely going to…die.
Jeffro
@Shana: Isn’t Cracker Barrel the place that caught a whole lot of RWNJ flack just for offering a non-meat protein-thingy as an option on the menu?
(You know, like a smart business would do.)
But I digress…they are already ‘woke’ beyond redemption. Alas.
Steve in the ATL
@Jeffro: yes, Cracker Barrel is so woke they were sued in a class action for race discrimination. And not against white people.
Tony G
Musk and investor David Sacks, plus Ron DeSantis. I propose that the three of them go on a one-way trip to Mars on an exploding Space-X rocket. These are the brilliant men who control our lives.
Jeffro
@Steve in the ATL: sorry, forgot the snark tags! =)
I’m sure they were like, “what? RWNJs are hating on US? We’re ‘woke’ despite all our efforts?”
MazeDancer
Laughing so hard.
Gee, who would have thought there would be technical glitches?
Eberybody
Sure Lurkalot
@Alison Rose: Well, that was MY adorable punim, but my mother also used it as just “face”. My maternal grandma left me a wealth of words both German and Yiddish and I should’ve written them down because they have, alas, faded.
satby
@Scout211: C’mon, you forgot that it was Pete? His answer was epic.
Manyakitty
@Alison Rose: it’s from the inner evil. Look at all of them–you can tell they’re…wrong… somehow. Desantis, Possum Queen, any random trump, etc. Ugly on the inside means ugly on the outside.
I remember the first time I saw Biden’s cabinet gathered together I was shocked by how normal they all looked. Must never allow myself to get numb to the darkness.
Manyakitty
@Mike in NC: dreamy 🤩 have a wonderful time!
Jackie
@scav: That’s delicious! So Tucker will have to resort to a fake background like TFG’s fake Oval Office!
Jackie
@Shana: Oh no’s!
Actually I enjoyed Cracker Barrel (vs Waffle House🤮) when it was a choice for breakfast.
Ohio Mom
@Sure Lurkalot: Get yourself a copy of Leo Rosten’s book,The Joys of Yiddish, your memory will be jogged and tickled.
Alison Rose
@zhena gogolia: Technically, it does. But in context, I only ever heard it used in a complimentary way, usually about a baby or child or puppy or something.
Tony G
“Servers are straining somewhat”. The capacity planning staff that Musk fired six months ago would have guesstimated the expected number of users, then doubled that guesstimate and then made sure that there was adequate server capacity for this “big event”. Spikes in usage fail without excess capacity. Any idiot knows that. An arrogant idiot on a platform that has been destroyed by an arrogant idiot.
sdhays
@Jackie: I recall reports of his campaign announcement last year being “low energy”, but of course he had some people cheering at some points, which is better than a weird tech disaster.
When I heard that DeSantis had chosen to do his campaign launch on Twitter, I thought it was a joke. Even without the (utterly predictable and predicted) technical failures, what on Earth did the DeSantis campaign hope to achieve with it, other than to use the launch to stoke Elmu’s ego?
One can only conclude that DeSantis detests events with regular supporters and thinks that rich, powerful people are the only people who matter. That actually tracks with everything we know about him.
Kent
How many were Russian bots?
Tenar Arha
@NotMax: lol, i’m ded
Geminid
@sdhays: I guess DeSantis and his henchmen want to tap into that glibertarian techbro money. Musk has loudly joined the anti-“Woke”, i.e. anti-Liberal movement, so he could be a natural ally for DeSantis.
And along with Thiel, Sacks is one of the owners of Call In, a media platform that might as well call itself Horse Shoe. I won’t be surprised if his stable of soreheads like Dore, Greenwald and Max Blumenthal start fluffing DeSantis, especially if the Governor leans into the anti-Ukraine side in this war.
I’ll find out by checking out the Twitter account “Post Left Watch,” which specializes in monitoring the Call In and Rumble crowd.
Planetjanet
@Suzanne: I had to drop some coin to the Biden campaign for the laugh.
Paul in KY
@Jeffro: MTG?
Paul in KY
@Shana: Hope you had a fine time down in the KY. Thank you for visiting!