Joe Biden and Donald Trump don’t have much in common apart from both being presidents. One is nice and chummy; the other mean and vindictive. They probably hate each other even more than people think. But on Wednesday, they both did the same thing: They dragged Ron DeSantis for his disastrous presidential campaign launch on Twitter.
Days ago, the Florida governor announced an unusual way to formally announce his 2024 run: Rather than hold some press event (or descend a golden escalator), he’d do it on Twitter Spaces. Teaming up with Elon Musk — and on a service that’s been plagued with problems ever since he took over and gutted the staff — was asking for calamity. And he got it. There were glitches from the start, and it took some 20 minutes for DeSantis to even speak. At one point the room crashed and they had to open a new one.
The launch was roundly mocked on social media, including by the men who could very well (or not!) become his predecessors. Let’s start with Biden, whose Twitter account mocked the technical difficulties with a simple tweet: the words “This link works,” directing users to his 2024 campaign site.
This link works: https://t.co/9PzIJkseYI
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 24, 2023
It may have been embarrassing for the relatively young DeSantis (and Elon Musk) to be pantsed by an 80-year-old man. Even worse, he was also belittled — relentlessly — by a 76-year-old.
As per The Daily Beast, Trump spent a lot of the lead-up to DeSantis’ Twitter Spaces gathering by lighting into him on Truth Social. He posted screengrabs of polls showing Trump trouncing him. He welcomed him to the race and warned him that he’ll be “attacked by the Marxists, Communists, and Radical Left Lunatics of our Country,” just as he had. At one point he called him “Rob,” which is admittedly kind of funny.
After The Twitter Spaces debacle, though, Trump really let it rip. He posted a video of a SpaceX rocket crashing and burning, the words “Ron! 2024” affixed to it.
he just destroyed ron and elon pic.twitter.com/4FyVdbpxLN
— francis wolf (@francisxwolf) May 24, 2023
He also posted a video juxtaposing his 2020 campaign launch with the snafus that plagued DeSantis’ 2024 one.
https://twitter.com/ReallyAmerican1/status/1661541710231371776
“Wow! The DeSanctus TWITTER launch is a DISASTER! His whole campaign will be a disaster. WATCH!” he wrote later.
He also weighed in on other Republican contenders. “Tim Scott’s Presidential launch, even with the broken microphone (don’t pay the contractor, Tim!), was by far the best Presidential launch of the week,” he wrote. “Robs was a catastrophe!”
“Rob” is no “Meatball Ron,” which he swears he’ll never say, but it’s oodles better than “DeSanctimonious.”