On Tuesday, news broke that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would be officially announcing his presidential candidacy in a Twitter Spaces conversation with Elon Musk. Observers at Slate and elsewhere debated whether this was a good idea; implicit in the discussion, though, was the premise that the announcement would actually take place.
For several minutes Wednesday night, that premise was called into question. The event was scheduled for 6 p.m. ET; around 6:10 p.m., Silicon Valley figure and co-host David Sacks spoke briefly before the feed cut out. After several more minutes, the Space, which was hosted on Musk’s Twitter page, went gray. At one point electronic hold music was playing.
However! At about 6:25 p.m., Musk posted a new Space, on which DeSantis delivered what sounds like a prepared speech about how he is running for president in order to defeat the “woke mind virus” (he’s said the word “woke” at least five times) and fight “medical authoritarianism.” He’s since began to answer questions from Sacks and Musk (the first one was about whether the media has been unfair to him). So, the news is good—for journalists, at least—because the event has now provided a metaphor that can be used if DeSantis’ campaign fails immediately or if he recovers from his initial problems to win the nomination. Mission accomplished!
