Ron “Don’t Say Gay” DeSantis’ presidential launch went off like a dumpster fire, & Twitter is losing it

Ron “Don’t Say Gay” DeSantis’ presidential announcement started with static. The combative Florida governor announced his candidacy for presidency Wednesday on Twitter Spaces, only for the streaming tool to crash.

Talk about a bad omen.

While more than 500,000 people tuned into the opening minutes of DeSantis’ botched virtual event, only 163,000 listeners remained when DeSantis started talking…after 25 minutes. Twitter owner and loathsome billionaire Elon Musk was on the call with DeSantis, along with right-wing tech entrepreneur David Sacks.

“That was insane, sorry,” said Musk.

It was also a complete joke. Within minutes of DeSantis’ flop, Joe Biden‘s team tweeted a fundraising message with a simple tag line: “This link works.”

As of Thursday morning, more than 11.4 million people have viewed Biden’s tweet–far more than the number of folks who stayed with DeSantis throughout his rocky campaign kick-off.

“Dark Brandon” wins again.

pic.twitter.com/KkPn8EVmVV— Yasmine Mary, ARNP-FNP-C (@yazzy1967) May 24, 2023

But it wasn’t just Biden who poked fun at DeSantis’ disastrous rollout. Fox News, which now seems to view Twitter as an emerging right-wing competitor, lambasted the flailing governor for his botched announcement.

Later in the night, DeSantis appeared on Fox News for an interview with former South Carolina congressman Trey Gowdy, who assured him the network “wouldn’t crash” during their segment.

Donald Trump and his team also feasted on DeSantis’ technological troubles.

“Glitchy. Tech issues. Uncomfortable silences. A complete failure to launch. And that’s just the candidate!” a Trump spokesperson texted reporters.

The disgraced ex-president himself also weighed in with a slickly produced, if not incredibly bizarre, parody of his own.

Unfortunately for DeSantis, his Twitter interview didn’t really improve once he started speaking. His speech was monotonous, bouncing between topics such as education, immigration and bitcoin.

If voters needed more evidence that DeSantis is completely out of touch, his supporters gathered Wednesday night for a launch party at the über-swanky Four Seasons in Miami. Nothing says “ordinary American” like an event at a luxurious five-star hotel!

In many respects, DeSantis’ flop of an announcement was the perfect crescendo to his gaffe-filled shadow campaign, in which he committed countless social faux pas.

Ever since winning reelection in November, the 44-year-old DeSantis has taken a hard turn to the right, supporting a large swath of legislation that targets LGBTQ+ people. He’s signed a law outlawing gender-affirming care for minors, and an anti-trans bathroom bill that allows adults to be criminally charged if they don’t use the bathroom that matches the sex they were assigned at birth. Florida also has a new anti-drag law that bars minors from attending drag shows with “lewd” performances.

Maybe most notably, DeSantis has championed “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, which prohibits discussion of sexual orientation and gender ideology throughout all grade levels. He’s been mired in an embarrassing feud with Disney, his state’s biggest tourism attraction, due to the company’s opposition to the law. (Last week, Disney abandoned a $1 billion developmental project in Orlando, which would’ve brought 2,000 jobs to the region, with $120,000 as the average annual salary.)

But even DeSantis’ extreme far-right agenda couldn’t save him from widespread mockery on both sides of the aisle Wednesday. As it turns out, his campaign announcement with Musk was an even bigger bleep show than expected.

Scroll down for more reaction to DeSantis’ horrible night…