New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mocked Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign launch by noting that more people watched her gaming online than listened to the 44-year-old begin to make his case to the voters.
Mr DeSantis started his campaign on Twitter Spaces alongside platform owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk and entrepreneur David Sacks. The launch was marred by tech issues, with the live broadcast crashing several times and the sound dropping out, which Mr Musk blamed on the servers being overwhelmed by the number of people trying to listen in.
Ben Collins of NBC News tweeted on Wednesday night that “David Sacks just ludicrously made up that Ron DeSantis’ Twitter space was the largest group that ‘has ever met online.’ There are 100,000 people in this thing.”
“We had more people join when I played Among Us,” Ms Ocasio-Cortez added.
More than 400,000 people watched Ms Ocasio-Cortez and Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar play the game Among Us on Twitch in the lead-up to the 2020 election – one of the 20 most watched streams on the platform at the time, according to The Verge.
Ms Ocasio-Cortez was far from the only one mocking the debacle of Mr DeSantis’s disastrous launch.
Donald Trump Jr echoed his father’s ‘”low energy” comments about former Florida Governor Jeb Bush during the 2016 campaign, saying that “DeSantis is making JEB! look high energy right now”.
Memes began to be shared of the Twitter Spaces chaos, including an edited video of Mr Trump tackling Mr DeSantis to the ground.
After the tech issues plaguing the Twitter Spaces event finally faded, Mr DeSantis was mocked for his voice.
“Now that the space has worked long enough for DeSantis to deliver consecutive desentences, all I’m seeing are tweets about how annoying his voice is,” Bobby Lewis tweeted.
DNC member Thomas Kennedy added: “Holy s*** this is the worst campaign launch I have objectively ever seen. Embarrassing technical difficulties and consists of DeSantis rambling with his annoying nasally voice about the most niche hyper online right-wing issues that your average voter finds weird and alienating.”
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, tweeted that “the initial space topped out at over 600k but this one is stuck at 139k”.
The second space later hosted on the account of Mr Sacks reached more than 300,000 listeners, according to Twitter.
“BuzzFeed exploding the watermelon hit 820,000 concurrent viewers in 2016,” Tom Gara noted.
MSNBC host Chris Hayes said: “I’m sorry but this is an ASTOUNDINGLY HUMILIATING degree of incompetence. Unspinnable failure. Total and complete. Fully public.”
Former Obama official and Pod Save America co-host Tommy Vietor tweeted on Wednesday evening that “doing a Twitter spaces conversation with Elon at some point during your campaign is a good idea, even if its glitchy. Making this awkward mess your presidential announcement is truly a disaster”.
The right-wing account Catturd added: “I left the Space - It was so terrible and boring I couldn’t take it anymore. I’m going to go watch some paint dry so I can be more entertained.”
Rep Matt Gaetz of Florida, a Trump supporter, simply wrote: “DeSedative.”
