BROADCASTS.com

If you are enjoying our newsletter and podcast, please consider becoming a subscriber.Legacy media has a headline they repeat no matter what\u2019s going on: Democrats in disarray. It wouldn\u2019t be a surprise to see them lead with that the morning after Ron DeSantis failure to launch his campaign and Don Trump responded by screaming about his big \u201cred button.\u201dYes, it\u2019s true, all of the worst people you know are fighting: It\u2019s Republicans in disarrayrapid unscheduled disassemblyOn Wednesday night, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis attempted to launch his official campaign on the world\u2019s second richest man\u2019s platform, Elon Musk, best known recently for his affinity for replying to amplify Nazis and what he called \u201crapid unscheduled disassembly\u201d of a Space X rocket as it exploded. It would be correct, then, to say the DeSantis\u2019 launch experienced \u201crapid unscheduled disassembly.\u201dThat\u2019s Elon for failure.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts/podcasts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The chosen venue was audio only, which was an odd choice for a presidential campaign but not odd if you have seen Ron DeSantis on video. I stand by my determination that DeSantis wisely calculated that he would be humanized next to Elon Musk in comparison. And that might have worked had the entire Twitter space not turned into the Elon show and complaints about Twitter.It began with at least 20 plus minutes of screeching feedback and glitches so bad that the entire Twitter space had to be shut down and a new one opened, causing a drop from 600,000 accounts to 192,000 at one point (the second space never got near the first one). no, it wasn\u2019t hugeThe tech problems were at one point blamed on server loads (Elon got rid of a bunch of servers thinking he didn\u2019t need them). Co-host David Sacks claimed it had been \u201cprobably the biggest room that has ever been assembled online," to which the Verge editor (tech expert) Alex Heath retorted, \u201cI have been in bigger Clubhouse rooms\u201d and New York Times start up and venture capitalist writer Erin Griffith added, \u201cthe 12 million people attended a virtual travis scott concert in Fortnite.\u201d After the claim to fame took on Elon proportions of exaggeration, she wrote, \u201cmore people watched 2 BuzzFeed employees explode a watermelon on Facebook in 2016.\u201delites whiningEventually, Ron DeSantis got to make his big announcement and his speech, which quickly devolved into the three white men running the show \u2013 the other co-host was venture capitalist David Sachs - complaining about \u201cthe elites\u201d and the \u201cmedia\u201d on a huge social media platform owned by Elon, who is, again, the second richest man in the world and Governor Ron DeSantis, who has taken it upon himself to make law about what people can say and has allowed the banning of books that offend him, is no powerless punk, even if Donald Duck has bested him recently.book bansDeSantis denied that he has banned any books, but PEN is here with some facts:DeSantis claimed \u201cBooks are being removed from Florida classrooms and libraries because they are \u201cpornographic, violent or inappropriate.\u201dFact:Books that have been banned in Florida include:* Biographies of Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente that Duval County admitted to removing from shelves for nearly a year, along with 177 other books from a collection of diverse books.* And Tango Makes Three, a picture book about two male penguins raising a chick.* Stella Brings the Family, a picture book about a girl with two dads.* When Wilma Rudolph Played Basketball, pulled from open shelves temporarily after one person complained about it.* Forever, by Judy Blume* Booker Prize winner The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy* Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison\u2019s The Bluest Eye* All Boys Aren\u2019t Blue, by George M. Johnson* The Handmaid\u2019s Tale, by Margaret Atwood* Dozens of books that include LGBTQ+ themes, protagonists of color, or that touch on race or racism.Ultimately, in the 2021-22 school year PEN America documented 565 books banned in Florida schools. Some were banned permanently, others temporarily pending investigations. The result is the same: Students can\u2019t access books.boring The biggest problem with Ron DeSantis\u2019s Twitter Spaces campaign launch, though, was as Jason Easley wrote on our Substack, that \u201cit was boring, really, really boring. It is impossible to see how this dull as watching paint dry culture warrior can possibly defeat Donald Trump\u2026 Ron DeSantis sounds small time, looks small time, and he lacks the presence and charisma to effectively engage voters.\u201dDeSantis attacked the NAACP, while claiming he was great for Black people and Musk brought up Nazis while the three men laughed at media outlets allegedly suggesting the only people listening would be Nazis, which as someone who was listening made me want to leave immediately and I can\u2019t imagine that was a good sell to any swing voters. But the boys found being called Nazis so funny. I guess you had to be there, but aren\u2019t you glad you weren\u2019t?But I promised you a fight and a fight you will have. don\u2019s big red buttonWhile Elon and Ron were fiddling around in the dark on an audio-only space, Don was over on HIS social media company mocking \u201cRob\u201d \u2013 his new name for DeSantis?- for having a small \u201cred button\u201d while making concerning references to Kim Jong Un soon being his new friend.Don wrote:\u201cRob,\u201d My Red Button is bigger, better, stronger, and is working (TRUTH!), yours does not! (per my conversation with Kim Jung Un, of North Korea, soon to become my friend!).As I wrote Wednesday evening, \u201cWe can only hope this was a phallic reference and not a nuclear reference. One can\u2019t be sure with Donald Trump, which is how he continues to get away with saying outrageous things that don\u2019t belong in normal public political discourse.\u201ddon is funny for a brief momentThis was followed by a video of Space X exploding as it fell to the ground, with \u201cRon 2024\u201d written over it, which was probably the best moment of humor Don has ever managed not to spoil with his bitterness and anger. Yet the red button haunts.don goes low (and wins)Don also did something really weird that started off as mayyybe good satire, but devolved due to the natural proclivities of the party involved. It started off as a satire of the twitter space with The Devil, Hitler, Elon, Ron, George Soros, Klaus Schwab, the FBI, and Dick Cheney with the loud coughing over empty space just like the actual announcement, along with the lags and glitches.But Don foiled his own humor with \u201cjokes\u201d about everyone on the call being \u201cgay\u201d followed up by Trump entering the twitter space to tell everyone off, which called attention to the anti-Semitism and the general grossness of being around someone like Don Trump. These are not people that most of us would invite over for dinner.Don has, however, wiped the floor with Ron, and there\u2019s nothing Elon can do about it, which seems like a big loss for those two horrible people\u2026 with one left. Republican expert on fail Newt Gingrich insults working AmericansIn response to the DeSantis launch, Newt Gingrich (rather an expert on bringing his entire party crashing down) went on Fox News to explain that DeSantis is really smart, but his problem is that he doesn\u2019t communicate like Trump, who uses 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade levels to speak to the base, which is why the Republican Party is the party of \u201cworking Americans\u201d now. If anyone was going to bring more fail to this situation, it would be Newt Gingrich, but it\u2019s still a surprise that he said this outloud on Fox.I\u2019m not sure telling the base that they need to be talked down to on their top network is the best way to move forward, but it\u2019s also a weird way to excuse the lack of policy meat in Trump\u2019s rhetoric. And frankly the dearth of policy that is good for those same \u201cworking Americans\u201d in the entire Republican Party platform.won\u2019t anyone think about Tucker\u2019s white supremacy platformElon\u2019s failure to launch twitter into the stratosphere of relevance