On Wednesday, all attention was focused on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as he joined Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces to announce his presidential bid for 2024 formally. However, according to Megyn Kelly, the highly anticipated event experienced technical issues and service interruptions during the initial 30 minutes, which raised concerns about Tucker Carlson’s upcoming transition to the same social media platform.
During an episode of her podcast, The Megyn Kelly Show, on Thursday, she pointed out that while the glitches were primarily on Elon Musk and his platform, DeSantis’ team should have taken greater precautions to ensure readiness. Kelly hoped these issues would be resolved before Tucker Carlson started using the platform, as crashing with 600,000 viewers would not be feasible for him.
With assistance from Musk, the much-anticipated campaign launch of DeSantis experienced a bumpy start, going from a stuttering stream to a complete outage even before the politician could address the audience. At its peak, Twitter Space attracted 650,000 listeners who were left disappointed and dark as moderator David Sacks’ voice could be heard in the background, remarking, “It just keeps crashing, huh?”
“It was embarrassing and awkward and had the bewildering, unsteadying feel of a disaster unfolding before your very eyes,” she said. “You can’t look away, yet you’re viscerally uncomfortable watching, too.”
Kelly clarified that she backs DeSantis and Musk in their endeavors to move away from conventional media, similar to her departure from Fox News with her podcast. She also stated her endorsement of DeSantis’ policies, albeit with some exceptions. Nevertheless, Wednesday’s event ultimately solidified itself as a disappointingly underwhelming occasion on both fronts.
“Kudos to all involved for choosing a different medium and bypassing the mainstream media, which hates DeSantis, and which is hated by most Republican voters,” Kelly said. “I support that mission, but its execution here, to put it kindly, did not work. How on earth were the kinks not worked out beforehand?”
