Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here, and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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David Sachs couldn't take it anymore.
Couldn't take any more. At this point, I think I literally have brain and ear cancer. For the uninitiated, it was a total and a complete disaster. We are not exaggerating glitches. From the very beginning. We have a little bit of a highlight reel for everybody.
Let's take a listen, hight, I'm pleased introduce to individuals who've done more to loosen the grip.
All right, Sorry about that. We've got so.
Many people here that I think we are we are kind of melting the servers, which is a good sign. Might have surprised many, but not those of us who've known to work with Elon for nearly a quarter century into freedom and to put his money off his mouth is.
Let's see so well, yeah, I think so, just to simplify that, there's three in an eighty two thousand people learn all right, great, so let's see, it's just keep crashing him.
Yeah. I think we've got.
Just a massive number of people online, so it's serve as restraining somewhat. All right, we're just reallocating more service capability to be able to handle a load here. It's really going going crazy. So yeah, I'm super excited to have governed status. Uh, make this up.
All right?
I think we're broadcasting man, I think we melted the internet there.
Yeah, that was insane. Sorry.
We actually doing this from David TeX's Twitter account because it looks like doing it from mine basically broke the Twitter system.
Governor Santis are you there? Can you get us? I think you're breaking right here? I know. I think I think you broke the internet there.
We had over half a million people in one Twitter space and it was growing by like fifty thousand a minute. So congrats on on breaking the internet there.
Well yeah, yeah, I mean you try some you know, new things that you're going to Yes, it's adventurous, so yes, But I think the value here is actually really high for people to hear directly from presidential candidates and to answer a Q and a live and you can get a sense for how a candidate really is, you know, and and where it's not just can speeches and telepronters. It's in fact you can tell by the you know, some of the mistakes that it's real.
My personal favorite, Crystal is whenever they keep forgetting to pause and they're like basically on a hot mic before everybody else. So after exactly twenty five minutes of glitches, we finally did get to hear from the candidate, the candidate, Governor DeSantis, whose Twitter video actually went out at six pm. By the way, we'll be breaking all that down tomorrow
in our morning show. But read's straight up Crystal off of a script basically from his campaign at an entirely five minute long presentation, and then from that point forward, David Sachs and appear clearly this was a coordinated event, calls on DeSantis surrogate's people like Thomas Massew's already endorsed Ron DeSantis governor Christopher Ruffo, who's worked closely with DeSantis
doctor j Bodataria. I mean, none of that is bad, I guess, but you know, ostensibly this is effectively a campaign event that was coordinated, held on Twitter in frankly a disastrous format. It was not too disantrst the strength.
So I'm agree that's like the nicest thing you could say. That's like so diplomatic, not to his strengths. I mean, okay, so first let's go through the blow by blow because regardless of like what happened after the initial disaster, already you've got the Daily Mail.
Says Ron disaster.
You've got Fox News, which has been in DeSantis's corner, but they feel snubbed over the fact that he decided to do this bizarre Twitter launch thing instead of launching with them, they're going after him. I mean what he said after the initial glitches almost doesn't really matter. Yeah, so let's go through a little bit of the blow by blow. So first of all, they launched the Twitter spaces. We couldn't get in. I mean we were trying. We were us and our team Griffin and Matt were all
trying to get it. You couldn't get in, Okay, so that's the first problem. You can't even get into this thing. Then I think you were able to get in, yes, but you couldn't hear anything.
Yeah, it was like static noise if feeble recorded.
There were Twitter and employees talking about servers and what I mean, just total disaster.
At some point, DeSantis leaves the whole thing, yes, several Yeah, and then they had.
To relaunch with the new spaces and apparently Elon, even though he was supposed to be hosting, they couldn't use his account. Still they had to like clude to work around. And the initial spaces that had crashed had over half a million people in it. When you came back in, you were about one hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, and David Sacks keep kept making these proclamations like this is the most people ever gathered on social media. It's like, no,
it's not. It's not even close to that. And this is for audio only. It's not even video. Okay, it's audio only. So it's obviously catastrophe for Elon and Twitter. It's a complete catastrophe for Ron DeSantis. I cannot imagine how he is feeling, Like the amount of rage and despair he must be feeling right now. I can't cannot even wrap my head around.
Yeah, I have.
Never seen a political event be this much of a disaster. And the other thing I was saying, you do use two soccer is like, even if the tech had worked flawlessly, this was a horrible idea.
Yes, like it had all of.
The energy people are saying online and this is not original. It had all the energy literally of a zoom conference call meeting with your boss, and it was hardly even focused on him. All these other characters were coming in and much of this was basically an ad, a really bad ad, since it was such a disaster for Twitter and Twitter spaces. You have even his surrogates, Thomas Massian's coming in.
Are you on?
You're so great?
So great?
What you're doing for the what are we doing here? This is the presidential campaigns.
We have a little bit that, Crystal. We have some some portions of this where they're basically just talking about how great Twitter and Twitter spaces is. Let's take a listen to that.
What made you want to kind of take the chance of doing it?
This way as opposed to just doing on cable bs or the usual way.
Well, when COVID hit, I had to make decisions about do you go with the crowd or do you look at the data yourself and cut against the grain. So when Elon must stepped up to purchase Twitter, he paid a lot of money for it, and I'm sure because he's a good businessman, Elon, I'm sure you'll end up making money off it. But the bottom line is you had to put your money where your mouth is because I think you recognize that you can't have a free society unless we have the freedom to debate the most
important issues that are affecting our civilization. That did not happen during COVID. The truth was censored repeatedly. And now that Twitter is in the hands of a free speech advocate, that would not be able to happen again on this Twitter platform.
Well, thank you. Yeah, We're absolutely committed to freedom speech and level playing field and just a vigorous debate and hopefully this can be a platform that brings people of divergent to political view is.
Yeah.
I mean, the amazing thing about Twitter and things like spaces are that although I happened to be hosting it. I had to switch over to David hosting it because my account was actually just too much interest. My account was breaking the system. But it's it's a There's really never been a mechanism before where someone could address the nation, or anyone who wanted to listen to them, could from from anywhere in the world, the United States or anywhere. So this is a I think this is a really
profound change. Whereas with a public digital town square like we have here, it's possible for the public to choose the narrative. It empowers the people instead of a very tiny elite cabal, which I don't recognize the irony of using that phrase, but but nonetheless it's it's true, and judge by the results.
First of all, let me say a big thank you to Elon Musk for buying Twitter and expect all of this. By the way, I've never met Elon Musk, but I'm one of your biggest fans. I'm the first congressman to have a tesla. I'm on star I'm on Starlink, and I would have bought a power wall, but I'm off the grid and you wouldn't tell me once, so I had to make one with the wrecked models.
Elon, if I put down money on January first, twenty twenty two, that Twitter was going to be the last bastion of free speech on Earth, brother, I'd be about as rich as you are on that bet right now. I mean, it's incredible, and Elon, I have to say thank you for taking the arrows and for unthrottling the accounts of all of us who got in trouble for sharing a New York Post story about a laptop.
Yeah, that was one of my immediate takeaways. Chrystal. I actually tweeted this at the time, and I just said, hey, you know, with respect to Elon into Sacks, why would DeSantis want his campaign launch to basically be an ad for Twitter spaces like announcements should not be an advertisement for the medium. And once again, look, I considered David sachs afriend. I think he's a nice guy. I really do.
I actually love his podcast, some of his stuff on Ukraine that said whenever he and Elon were being like nobody's ever done anything like this before, I look, it's this is literally not true. I mean, like YouTube has held events where millions of people are watching synchronously in audio and in video, and like you said, that was just that's video way actually harder to pull off. So clearly, you know, Twitter completely shit the bed. Yeah, in their
role out of this, the infrastructure was a nightmare. And I also think this is a big indictment of the DeSantis campaign. Nobody picked up the phone and said, hey, are you guys sure, Like are we good to go? Can we do a test? Like can we make sure one hundred percent? There's no you know, this is literally the job of advanced staff to make sure and you know, you know this also crystal, like anytime candidates and others
are doing something high profile. I mean, hell, even sometimes when we interview people, they you know, their team will check like what time is it gonna go up? Like can we do a check just make sure everything is good to go, like a pre zoom call almost, you know, I mean, these are very normal things whenever it comes to you know, even mid profile events. This is the highest high profile you're on the absolute biggest national stage ever. And yeah, I mean the big story out of it,
unfortunately for him, is nothing that he said. Another reason why I think it was a huge mistake was it was long, It was plotting. It was over an hour and pre selected questions, prescripted answers. That is not engaging. It was difficult to listen to and to be engaged in, you know, and like, that's just not it's not good radio man, Why I do this for a living. The whole time, I'm like, ask him a freaking question. I'm like, dude, you know, get the pace going. Don't let him just
read off of the thing. That's just not how these things are supposed to go.
It made him look very small, feel very small, And so there's an advantage of I'm sure what they were going for was like, oh, people feel more.
Connected to them. It's more of an intimate setting.
You're having this, like you're being let in on this conversation among these people that you've heard about.
But it didn't come across that way.
It came across as wildly inauthentic because everything was obviously completely pre planned and scripted. So if your bet was this will be a more authentic, natural setting, well you definitely blew it on that front. And then the advantage of a normal, traditional staged campaign speech. You know, think of how much thought Trump puts into the optics of his campaign speeches and what's behind him and who's behind him, and in the airplane hangar with his private jet behind
all that sort of stuff. It gives you that sense with the staging and the music and the presence, like oh, this is a thing that I want to be part of. And it also helps to enable you to envision this person as president of the United States and commander in chief. So if you're going to skip down on that, you better have a damn good reason. So, like I said, even if the tech had been flawless, I think this would have been a disaster for him because it was
so poorly planned. It was so boring, it was so plotting, it was so prescripted, it was so lacking in any sort of like all right, let's do this thing, campaign, excitement, launch energy, that it was a terrible concept from the start. And I also have to say on like this side, and I talked to Emily about this some this morning. You know, conservatives have been and I have been also very rightfully upset about collaboration between social media giant companies
and government. And then here you have this billionaire owner of Twitter putting his hand thumb directly on the scales in favor of his favorite presidential can It's like, how can you argue that this is like a neutral free speech platform at this point when you've clearly made a bet in terms of this political race, and of course people are going to assume, right, what are you doing behind the scenes that try to pump this guy up when you're publicly pumping this guy up to the best
of your ability.
Although that kind of fell fell flat, didn't it.
I agree. I think it was a mistake for Elon to do that, you know, especially for you know, he has a brand that he actually had a decent amount of leverage with Democrats even before this. Glenn Greenwald, I know you guys talked about on the show today that pole. Yeah, showing Elon's likability ratings and all that becoming explicitly partson is just not the right thing to do here. The second thing I would just say is hold a goddamn rally. You know, just just do a rally.
God supporters, pahuld show up our.
Particular freaking governor in Florida. You should have just put out a video. I mean, he's in Miami right now, and he should have just done a damn rally and then immediately after the rally. I mean, right now as you and I are speaking, he's literally on Fox News. We'll be covering them all of that tomorrow in terms of his interview, some maybe some other things that he says. But you know, I mean, looking at the takeaway, it's not just us. Front page in the New York Times,
Desanta's announcement is disrupted by Twitter malfunction. The subhead of there is about what's going on with ron said, second front page of the Washington Post Desanti's presidential campaign kickoff on Twitter plagued by technical issues. If you look at the Daily Mail, so, like you said, they call him a failure off in Ronning. That's what the top of a New York Post is.
That's the nicest fun you can say.
I've gotten a neutral.
Often Ronning is what we've got from the New York Posts. They're in the Tank Forum, Daily Mail.
Oh we've got a we got a Trump react to, don't we?
Yes? I have. I tru got it there here in front of me. It says, Rob. My red button is bigger, better, stronger and is working truth Yours does not. Per My conversation with Kim Jong Moon of North Korea soon to become my friend. For those who don't remember, the red button is a reference to the fire and fury speech.
Yeah, the nuclear nuclear button.
Not his best work in my opinion, but I'm sure he's going to be having a field day with this for a long time. And here's the thing too, for DeSantis, why this is a story that may have maybe problematic for him beyond just this moment. His whole pitch is like,
I'm Trump without the chaos. I'm Trump but competent. And so when your launch is a humilion, a shit show, it's hard for you to carry the message of like, okay, but I'm the one who knows how to actually I think he even had a line in there like some people know how to tweet, and I know how to get it done. It's like, well, that's not really demonstrated with your launch today, buddy. And I do think those
things could matter. I mean, part of I think how Obama was able to defeat Hillary bat all the way back in two thousand and eight, even as this junior senator and upstart, was because his campaign had the impression of this thing is locked down, it's effectively run, it's effectively man it's like, Okay, maybe he is up to the task.
Not a good first impression.
I guess this is like probably the most diplomatic thing I could say at this point.
It was a bad impression. It gives it. Here's the other thing. You know, media is already out for blood with Ron de Santas. So the thing is it's your job to not give them anything, to give them nothing to work with. So all they have to do is cover the text and of the announcement of the actual substance of what he is promising. And you know, unfortunately for him, that's just not going to be the headline.
Like I said, the Daily Mail first thing that they lead with finally underway after twenty six minutes of glitches. Then yeh, rips Disney for you know, injecting gender ideology like that could have been the headline out of it. And that's what you and I could have been talking about it. Forday, we will spend a lot of time tomorrow more a little bit on the substance of Most of what he wanted to initially focus on was the
reaction to COVID gender ideology. You will resign you know, wokeism or woke ideology to the dust beIN pretty cookie cutter stuff for his speech it is.
I mean it's very cookie cutter Ron DeSantis. But I do think the decision to launch on Twitter and the choice of topics that he leans into, I mean really no bread and butter issues, right, No healthcare, no wages, no cod very little, very light on those topics. It's all like the woke mind virus and DEI and ESG and all of these things that a lot of normal people would be like, what the hell are you been
talking about right now? I think that that is a symptom of him being way too online, which is how you end up thinking that it's a good idea to launch your presidential campaign on Twitter, a platform that even if it had all gone well, a tiny slice of the public uses even tinier slice of the public has ever used Twitter spaces or even heard of Twitter spaces.
So I do think that that's emblematic of a deeper issue for him of you know, is this really going to be what your average normal, non super online Republican voter is looking for in a candidate, Because I do think he suffers from being in those like online conservative echo chamber conversations way too much.
Yes, yeah, I think so. He did a little bit in his speech. He was talking about net migration, all that stuff. That's that to me, that is the best case for DeSantis. The best case is look at the scoreboard.
I won.
I flipped a purple state into a red state. Millions of people moved to me because I did a good job. Now let's make America the same as Florida. Like that is actually a great message, but you have got to make sure that you're connecting it in a way where it can not only resonate with the primary voter, the GOP primary voter, which of course you know has all of these culture war things that they want to hear about, but also this isn't just your kickoff to them, it's
your kickoff to everybody. So anyway, failure to launch, that's already what that's already what the Trump campaigns going.
Man.
They are having an absolute feel day. It's got to be. I've got my Twitter feed in front of me, Crystal. They have already released a video mocking and making fun of him, cutting together of his of the Twitter spaces. They've they've they've been saying, like, oh more people watch CNM than are listening to Meatball rob So they're going all in in terms of against him. And look, I mean this is part people will be like, oh, you're
being unfair. Look what we're doing is we know Crystal, you and I Trump will reach for anything, so will the media. It's your job not to give them anything to work with. You gave it to work with them. And he's gonna he's gonna be hearing about this one for a long time.
You're running to be, you know, the chief executive of the country in a way, you know you're running. You're you're trying to run the whole show here. If you can't even handle your own campaign launch, it's not a great first statement about how you do managing the country.
Yes, so we will have a ton more for you guys tomorrow, more elements and everything, a full breakdown of the DeSantis interview tonight on Fox. He's gonna have also an interview with Mark Levin. We will have a breakdown of his video, even more thoughts and things about how
he's positioning himself. We want to give everybody a quick emergency reaction and thank you all for our premium describers who enable our ability for the whole team to just mobilize like this on a dime and post it and make sure it gets up to everyone Breakingpoints dot com if you are able. Otherwise, we'll see your beautiful faces bright and early tomorrow morning.
Yep, that's right.
Personally, I don't know if I've ever enjoyed a presidential launch more.
It was fun.
Thank you, Thank you.
Rob.
My fiance was like, what are you doing in there, because Lily sitting cackling. I was like, I cannot Yeah, it was too profane to say here, but it was pretty bad. I was. I was, I was laughing. I was truely laughing. We'll see you guys later. Bye,