The internet was not kind to Ron DeSantis after his 2024 presidential campaign launch battled technical failures on Wednesday night.
The Florida governor made his presidential bid on the app in a virtual conference room co-hosted by Twitter CEO Elon Musk. After more than 20 minutes worth of technical difficulties, Musk restarted the event. Although the do-over resolved the technical issues, the internet jumped at the opportunity to make memes, many using the hashtag #DeSaster, poking fun at DeSantis and Musk over the delayed start. #DeSaster began trending on Twitter shortly after the event ended.
Many of the memes played off of the name of the event—Preparing to Launch, which was a play on words combining DeSantis’ campaign launch and Musk’s business ventures of launching rockets into space with his spacecraft manufacturing company SpaceX.
Newsweek reached out to DeSantis’ campaign by email for comment.
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Internet users didn’t hold back when making fun of the newest presidential candidate.
“Live shot of Ron DeSatanist trying to reboot his presidential bid. #DeSaster#FailureToLaunch,” one person tweeted, purposefully misspelling DeSantis and including a GIF of the America Online loading screen.
“Failure to Launch Crashed #DeSaster,” another person tweeted, including a meme of DeSantis and Musk with frowns on their faces and a crashed rocket in the background.
Another person tweeted a picture of the “Failure to Launch” movie poster, but superimposed Musk’s and DeSantis’ faces over the 2006 romantic comedy stars Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew McConaughey respectively.
Others implemented DeSantis’ drama with entertainment company Disney into their memes and some people made fun of the Twitter servers that failed during the first 20 minutes of DeSantis’ campaign announcement.
Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden also didn’t hesitate to tease DeSantis’ launch. Trump roasted DeSantis by posting clips of his Mar-a-Lago campaign announcement studded with applause and supportive chants interspersed with clips of the glitches and deafening feedback and echoes that was the first 20 minutes of DeSantis’ launch. Biden was much more succinct, tweeting a simple “This link works” along with his presidential campaign donation page.
Some big-name Republicans were supportive of DeSantis. Conservative political commentator Tomi Lahren called DeSantis’ launch “refreshing”, and former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis tweeted a series of positive messages regarding DeSantis’ kickoff.
Musk blamed his massive Twitter following of more than 140 million followers and the hype surrounding DeSantis’ anticipated announcement as the reason behind the glitches. He ended the Twitter Spaces event by offering the platform to other presidential candidates if they wished to use it.