Awkward Silence: Ron DeSantis’ audacious Twitter gambit that flopped

It was the announcement that went unheard around the world.

Ron DeSantis plotted to open his presidential campaign early Wednesday night with a groundbreaking social media bet, introducing himself during an audio-only Twitter forum with Elon Musk. His 2024 effort instead began with a moment of silence. Then several more.

A voice fell in, then two – Mr. Musk’s? – to disappear again.

“It’s quiet now,” someone whispered. This was correct.

“We’ve got so many people here that we’re melting the servers a bit,” said David Sacks, the nominal moderator, “which is a good sign.” This was not true.

Soon all signs were bad. Hold music for a while. Some users were summarily booted from the platform, where hundreds of thousands of accounts had gathered to listen.

“The servers are a bit under pressure,” Mr. Musk said at one point, perhaps unaware that his mic was hot, at least briefly.

For 25 minutes, Mr. DeSantis was the only person unmistakably not talking (at least through a microphone).

The Florida governor’s chosen rollout location would always remain a risk, an aural bet on Mr. Musk, a famously fickle and oxygen-stealing co-star, and the persuasiveness of the governor’s disembodied voice himself. (“Whiny,” Donald J. Trump has called him.)

But the higher-order cons proved more relevant. Twitter’s streaming tool known as Spaces is historically glitchy. Executive competence, the core of DeSantis’ campaign message, was conspicuously absent. And for a politician credibly accused over the years of being incorrigible online — a former DeSantis aide said he regularly read his Twitter entries — the event amounted to hard confirmation, a supposed signal of zeitgeist instincts which instead devolved into a conference call from hell.

“You can tell by some of the mistakes that it’s real,” Musk said.

At 6:26 p.m., Mr. DeSantis finally announced himself, long after his campaign announced his intentions, reading from a script that often mimicked an email sent to reporters more than 20 minutes earlier.

“Well,” he opened, “I’m running for President of the United States to lead our great American comeback.”

After Mr. DeSantis went through a curated biography that listed his military background and his “energetic” demeanor, Mr. DeSantis stayed on the line, where Mr. Sacks acknowledged the mess.

“Thank you for putting up with these technical issues,” he said. “Why did you want to take the chance to do it this way?”

Mr. DeSantis immediately deflected his stewardship of Florida in the Covid era, saying he had made decisions that “went against the grain.”