Florida Governor Ron DeSantis plans to launch his presidential bid on Twitter Spaces on May 24, in a discussion with Elon Musk moderated by David Sacks
280 characters at a time Nancy Cook / Bloomberg : Ron DeSantis to Join Elon Musk on Twitter Wednesday to Announce 2024 Run Lawrence Richard / Fox News : Florida college student who shared location of Elon Musk is now tracking Ron DeSantis NBC Bay Area : 5 Things to Know Before the Stock Market Opens Wednesday Rohail Saleem / Wccftech : Shares of Trump's Digital World Remain in Focus as Elon Musk Again Implies Preference For Ron DeSantis Andy Meek / BGR : Is Elon Musk's Twitter about to supplant Fox News? Selim Algar / New York Post : Ron DeSantis presidential campaign team unveiled — including former Trump staffer Martin Pengelly / The Guardian : Ron DeSantis to launch presidential campaign on Twitter with Elon Musk Jessica Guynn / USA Today : Musk's Twitter tries to recapture the political spotlight post Trump with DeSantis 2024 run Tiyashi Datta / Reuters : Explainer: What is Twitter Spaces where DeSantis will announce his presidential run? Andrew Hutchinson / Social Media Today : Elon Musk is Set to Host Ron DeSantis' Presidential Campaign Launch via Twitter Spaces David Hamilton / Associated Press : College student once banned from Twitter for tracking Elon Musk's airplane has a new jet-setting target: Ron DeSantis Ben Mathis-Lilley / Slate : Ron DeSantis Is Launching His Campaign on Twitter With Elon Musk. Does That Make Him a Genius or an Idiot? Amrita Khalid / The Verge : Why YouTube is a tough place for kids podcasts The Information : DeSantis to Announce 2024 Presidential Run in Interview with Elon Musk Matt Binder / Mashable : Elon Musk will launch Ron DeSantis' presidential campaign on Twitter Spaces Financial Times : Ron DeSantis to announce US presidential run on Elon Musk's Twitter Jill Goldsmith / Deadline : Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis To Declare Presidential Bid On Twitter Tomorrow In Interview With Elon Musk, Who Hopes Someone “Fairly Normal” Will Win Makena Kelly / The Verge : Ron DeSantis to announce presidential bid in Twitter Space with Elon Musk Nikki McCann Ramirez / Rolling Stone : DeSantis to Announce His 2024 Campaign Alongside Elon Musk Semafor : DeSantis to announce 2024 bid on Twitter Spaces meeting with Elon Musk Mastodon: Judd Legum / @juddlegum@journa.host : Elon Musk changed Twitter's algorithm to feature his own tweets and now he's using that power to promote his preferred presidential candidate. Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life@mas.to : The endgame of devolving into Truth Social minus Trump is almost complete. — https://www.nbcnews.com/... Catalin Cimpanu / @campuscodi@mastodon.social : @Techmeme Modern proto-fascists need to stand together. Next after the Twitter Spaces, DeSantis will give interviews on RussiaOne Christopher Schmidt / @crschmidt@better.boston : The latest is the DeSantis presidential announcement being via a Twitter spaces call with Elon Musk, violating even the fig leaf of political neutrality Musk has pretended to maintain, but it's just Non stop stream of bad in that direction. Lauren Weinstein / @lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org : BREAKING: Censorship king DeSantis to announce presidential run on #Twitter tomorrow with “free speech” Elon Musk. Tweets: @jason : So.... Governor @RonDeSantis will announce his Presidential run tomorrow at 6pm ET/9pm PT on... Twitter Spaces.. with @elonmusk 👀 !!! the media landscape has changed CNN or Fox would drive 1-3m viewers, Twitter will probably drive a multiple of that. @jbouie : desantis has to overcome the growing perception that he is an off-putting weirdo and what is he doing instead? making the biggest announcement of his political career with a noted off-putting weirdo Jason Kint / @jason_kint : Interesting strategy as it will juice a very very large inflated metric (I'm sure they'll report total viewers which will count anyone who watches for a second) in feed with Musk promotion. And a metric Trump can't match since he's not using Twitter. Question: is it a donation? https://twitter.com/... Eric Feigl-Ding / @drericding : Ironic that Elon the free speech absolutist endorses the book-banning guy for president. Fantastic scoop by @DashaBurns Meme HT @OrganizerMemes https://www.nbcnews.com/... [image] Dr Jordan B Peterson / @jordanbpeterson : Bye bye @cnn @msnbc @nytimes you deserve your demise and won't be missed. https://twitter.com/... Mehdi Hasan / @mehdirhasan : It'll be fascinating to hear Musk, the free speech absolutist, grill DeSantis on the latter's well-documented crackdowns in Florida on free speech, the free press, and books in their Twitter Spaces conversation. He'll grill DeSantis on free speech, right? Right? Ri... @rmac18 : Interesting that a major presidential player chose to launch their campaign on an audio-only platform with a history of bugs and failures. Tomorrow's event could be one of the biggest for Spaces ever. Wonder if it'll hold up... https://www.nytimes.com/... Eliza / @elizableu : Just trying to find some type of middle ground here, does @cwarzel have suggestions on how to improve the user experience of other content creators/users outside of the political right? How would you improve Twitter 2.0 or do you see it as a complete lost cause? https://twitter.com/... John Mappin / @johnmappin : This will help @elonmusk but will be a death knell for de Santis. The Republican base has already clocked him as disloyal and this is desperate. Ron DeSantis to Announce 2024 Presidential Run With Elon Musk on Twitter https://www.nytimes.com/... Dan Primack / @danprimack : Lot of the talking heads making fun of DeSantis for announcing via Twitter seem to be missing the point... it's caused them to talk about DeSantis announcement. Biggest risk for DeSantis isn't so much the unscripted nature, but that he could get upstaged by Musk. John Scott-Railton / @jsrailton : Trump had Murdoch. DeSantis has Musk. Once more, a rich media owner will try to sway an American election. [image] Rachel Bitecofer / @rachelbitecofer : That's one way to make your candidate seem human! https://www.nytimes.com/... Sherrilyn Ifill / @sifill_ : So much free speech, it's blinding. https://twitter.com/... Chris Hayes / @chrislhayes : Two of the most charming, charismatic and relatable men you could possibly think of. https://www.nbcnews.com/... Michael Rosenberg / @mjrosenbergdad : Everyone's focusing on how pathetic it is for DeSantis to be doing this alongside Elon Musk, but can we finally get a mea culpa from the commentators who said we can't be so quick to judge Elon Musk's politics. Turns out we can, like every liberal said at the time! https://twitter.com/... TexasLindsay / @texaslindsay_ : Interesting. Smart business move if @elonmusk can convince Democrats or other candidates to do the same. The potential reach for politicians, coupled with potential access for the public to ask questions live is far better than any other medium I know of. https://www.nbcnews.com/... Dave Lee / @daveleebbg : Watching this clip you might well come to the conclusion the real battle this election isn't Trump v DeSantis, but Trump v Musk. How powerful can Twitter be to get “someone normal” into the WH? https://twitter.com/... @wsjlive : At WSJ's CEO Council Summit @elonmusk talked about his plans to speak with @GovRonDeSantis tomorrow on Twitter Spaces. “It will be the first time something like this is happening on social media.” [video] Mehdi Hasan / @mehdirhasan : As ever, for conservatives, it's all projection all the time. ‘Big Tech is biased to Dems!’ Do you remember Jack Dorsey telling people on here to vote Dem? Or Mark Zuckerberg launching Biden's presidential campaign with him on Facebook? Nope. And yet: https://www.nbcnews.com/... Ben Smith / @semaforben : This is a real slap in Fox's face https://www.semafor.com/... [image] Trip Gabriel / @tripgabriel : 'Last summer, when Mr. DeSantis was asked about Mr. Musk's potential support, the Florida governor cracked: “I welcome support from African Americans, what can I say?” (Mr. Musk is white and from South Africa.)' https://www.nytimes.com/... Mehdi Hasan / @mehdirhasan : Well this ‘analysis’ from the Times aged wonderfully... https://twitter.com/... [image] Ron Filipkowski / @ronfilipkowski : ‘Twitter Files’ was supposed to prove that the people running Twitter before put their thumb on the scales to help Biden in 2020. And now the new owner is hosting the launch of Ron Desantis's presidential campaign to his 130+ million followers after saying he would support him. @jbouie : this is what happens when your press team and political advisors are hyper-online maniacs https://www.nytimes.com/... Jake Lahut / @jakelahut : Trump adviser reaction to the DeSantis announcement: “Announcing on Twitter is perfect for Ron DeSantis. This way he doesn't have to interact with people and the media can't ask him any questions.” @rachelsklar : trying to remember all the people who were like, oh you're overreacting about Musk, he's a genius and actually quite liberal https://www.nytimes.com/... Aisha Counts / @aishacounts : Musk told the WSJ that he's not going to endorse any particular candidate at this time https://twitter.com/... Lora Kolodny / @lorakolodny : Tue. WSJ CEO Council Summit is starting and Elon Musk is scheduled to speak. Will listen in so you don't have to... Judd Legum / @juddlegum : Self-described “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk will have a formal role in the presidential announcement of Ron DeSantis, who has launched an aggressive crackdown on free speech in Florida K-12 schools, universities, and private businesses [image] Benjy Sarlin / @benjysarlin : Pros: Will get lots of attention. Any chance to win over a potential zillion-dollar donor with a media empire seems like a good idea. Cons: You're launching your campaign as the B-story to some bigger celebrity's hero's journey? Musk and his platform are unstable/unreliable. E.B. Boyd / @ebboyd : This needs to be analyzed the same way we'd analyze any business co-branding event — & assess what novel downstream implications it introduces, given that this doesn't usually happen in politics https://twitter.com/... Ryan Broderick / @broderick : I think DeSantis' Total Posting political strategy is a bad one and I think announcing his presidential run in a Twitter Space hosted by Elon Musk is a tremendous misunderstanding of where American politics are heading. https://twitter.com/... Dan Primack / @danprimack : Not sure that announcing his presidential campaign on Twitter Spaces makes a ton of sense for DeSantis, but it's a huge coup for @elonmusk. @alex : the sacks-musk-desantis union makes me wonder if the former two appreciate the desantis approach to attacking companies that don't bow to him @internethippo : Unsafe levels of dork energy in one place https://twitter.com/... Donie O'Sullivan / @donie : Wonder if this is going to be the thing that makes Trump start tweeting again? Ken Klippenstein / @kenklippenstein : Musk hasn't even endorsed DeSantis and praised one of his opponents last week lmao [image] Brian Fung / @b_fung : Musk retweets the announcement that he'll be helping to launch Ron DeSantis' presidential campaign with a Twitter Spaces event [image] Sara Fischer / @sarafischer : Under Elon Musk's ownership, @Twitter is becoming the center of gravity for conservatives. This morning I reported that @dailywireplus is putting all of its podcast videos on Twitter: https://www.axios.com/... https://twitter.com/... Noah Kulwin / @nkulw : There are many reasons this is stupid. The biggest one is that twitter spaces will fall apart https://twitter.com/... Matt Binder / @mattbinder : Elon Musk: Twitter must be politically neutral also Elon Musk: [image] Dan Primack / @danprimack : So... @DavidSacks, who just agreed to join the board of Rumble (which bought his podcast platform on the cheap), is gonna help @GovRonDeSantis launch on Twitter, a rival to Rumble. https://twitter.com/... @joshuaphilll : Ron DeSantis will announce his campaign for president on a Twitter Spaces with Elon Musk tomorrow. Fuck both these slimey fascists. https://www.nbcnews.com/... Ben Jacobs / @bencjacobs : Worth noting Sacks is belligerently isolationist on Ukraine https://twitter.com/... Ken Klippenstein / @kenklippenstein : The guy DeSantis is launching his campaign with hasn't even endorsed him lmao [image] Ryan Broderick / @broderick : A reader emailed me a while back to say that they thought Twitter under Musk would just continue evolving into what it was always destined to become, only faster, which is Fox News for millennials. https://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
DeSantis chose Twitter Spaces not simply as a distribution channel but as a launch-stage partner: Musk would participate and David Sacks would moderate. The choice follows Musk’s public indication that he saw DeSantis favorably, including his earlier suggestion that DeSantis could beat Biden.
The event also fits reporting that Musk was positioning Twitter as a more explicitly right-leaning media venue rather than a conventional social-media utility. It makes the platform’s owner, product format, and political reach part of the same campaign moment.
First-order effects
- DeSantis’s campaign gains a direct, platform-native launch event with Musk’s audience and Sacks as moderator, rather than relying solely on a television network or press conference.
- Twitter Spaces becomes the immediate venue under scrutiny: its ability to carry a high-attention live political event becomes central to the launch’s reception.
Second-order effects
- Other presidential campaigns and political media outlets face pressure to weigh whether access to large platform personalities and live-audio formats can complement—or displace—traditional launch coverage.
- The arrangement heightens attention to the platform owner’s editorial and distribution influence, especially after Twitter’s policy changes around visibility and monetization of speech reframed how the service handles negative and hate-related posts.
Third-order effects
- If prominent campaigns increasingly launch through owner-led platform events, political communication could become more dependent on a small number of privately controlled distribution layers rather than publisher-led media institutions.
- That shift would sharpen enduring questions about platform gatekeeper leverage: whether product rules, moderation choices, and a proprietor’s participation can be cleanly separated from political access.
The trend: This is one instance of political campaigns treating social platforms not just as advertising channels, but as live media partners whose owners and product design shape public access.