The internet was not kind to Ron DeSantis after his 2024 presidential campaign launch battled technical glitches on Wednesday night.
The Florida governor made his presidential bid for the app in a virtual conference room co-hosted by Twitter CEO Elon Musk. After more than 20 minutes of technical difficulties, Musk restarted the event. Although the replay resolved the technical issues, the internet seized the opportunity to create memes, many using the hashtag #DeSaster, mocking DeSantis and Musk for the delayed start. #DeSaster began trending on Twitter shortly after the event ended.
Many of the memes were based on the name of the event: Preparing to Launch, which was a pun combining DeSantis’s campaign launch and Musk’s business ventures of launching rockets into space with his spacecraft manufacturing company. SpaceX.
news week reached out to the DeSantis campaign by email for comment.
Getty
Internet users did not hold back in mocking the new presidential candidate.
“Live image of Ron DeSatanist trying to restart his presidential bid. #DeSaster#FailureToLaunch,” one person tweetedMisspelling DeSantis on purpose and including a GIF of the America Online loading screen.
“Failed to start locked #DeSaster,” another person tweetedincluding a meme of DeSantis and Musk scowling and a crashed rocket in the background.
Another person tweeted an image of the “Failed to Launch” movie poster, but superimposed the faces of Musk and DeSantis on top of the 2006 romantic comedy starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew McConaughey, respectively.
Others implemented DeSantis’ drama with the Disney entertainment company into their memes, and some people made fun of Twitter’s servers crashing within the first 20 minutes of DeSantis’ campaign announcement.
Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden also did not hesitate to provoke DeSantis’ launch. Trump roasted DeSantis by posting clips of his Mar-a-Lago campaign ad peppered with cheers and chants of support interspersed with clips of glitches and deafening comments and echoes that were the first 20 minutes of DeSantis’ pitch. Biden was much more concise, tweeting a simple “This link works” along with his presidential campaign donations page.
Some big-name Republicans supported DeSantis. Conservative political commentator Tomi Lahren called DeSantis’ release “refreshing,” and former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis tweeted a series of positive messages about DeSantis’ release.
Musk blamed his massive Twitter following of more than 140 million followers and the hype surrounding DeSantis’ early announcement as the reason behind the glitches. He ended the Twitter Spaces event by offering the platform to other presidential candidates if they wanted to use it.