Move over, Mars. Elon Musk turns his attention to 2024 White House race
The billionaire wants Twitter to be the home to presidential hopefuls, but Ron DeSantis’s glitch-plagued campaign launch raises questions.
Fiasco. Disaster. Amateur hour.
The descriptions were biting for Elon Musk’s latest experiment at Twitter, as he tried to insert himself into the national political conversation by personally hosting the launch of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign on the social-media platform.
By welcoming the Republican, Musk entered new territory as the owner of Twitter, which has long been home to political speech but is now taking a heavier hand in serving it up.
The billionaire entrepreneur is trying to use his unique position as the platform’s biggest draw to become ringmaster to those competing for the White House, encouraging other presidential aspirants to join him in engaging in live discussions with users.
After seven months of his ownership, Twitter is turning out to be many things for Musk: a platform to expedite bigger ideas, such as digital banking; a media property competing against traditional news outlets for audiences and ad dollars; and—as this past week illustrated—a way for him to be centre stage in US politics.
“I’m not at this time planning to endorse any particular candidate,” Musk said at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit ahead of the DeSantis event. “But I am interested in…Twitter being somewhat of a public town square, and where more and more organisations host content and make announcements on Twitter.”
Even with Wednesday’s stumble, Musk is trying to position Twitter ahead of the 2024 presidential election as research shows the platform is gaining favour among Republicans. He has taken control of the site as a growing field of GOP hopefuls look at taking on former President Donald Trump in his bid for a second term.
Wednesday’s live-audio event for DeSantis was marred by technical glitches that delayed the proceedings by more than 20 minutes, raising questions about whether other candidates would want to follow the governor’s lead.
Musk chalked up the snafus to too many people trying to log on to the so-called Spaces event. The DeSantis team said that the Republican “broke the internet” during news coverage of the troubled introduction and that he raised more than $1 million in contributions in the first hour of his campaign.
Lot of noise about @RonDeSantis announcing & discussing his Presidential bid on this platform.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 26, 2023
But you what isn’t noise? Setting an all-time record for fundraising!
Worth considering for announcements in general. https://t.co/8cGlxiHhHS
Wealthy men from Michael Bloomberg to the late Sheldon Adelson strove to use their fortunes and influence to put their imprints on elections. For much of his public life, Musk eschewed politics. “I would prefer to stay out of politics,” he tweeted in 2021.
Instead, he has used his celebrity to prod and cajole US government officials to take his side when issues have arisen involving his companies, including the automaker Tesla and the rocket maker SpaceX.
“There used to be a Sheldon Adelson primary for presidential candidates to win his blessing and his donation,” Republican pollster Frank Luntz said. “Now there’s an Elon Musk primary, and the cost of entry is a Twitter event.”
The risk for Twitter and Musk’s empire of businesses is that what lures Republicans might in turn repel Democrats, though he has said he welcomes all. He tweeted this past week that he would be happy to interview President Biden as the Democrat seeks a second term.
All Presidential candidates are most welcome on this platform
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 24, 2023
Ahead of Wednesday’s event, akin to a public conference call broadcast through Twitter, some observers cautioned that the Spaces system had been glitchy and that DeSantis risked being overshadowed by Musk.
The allure for DeSantis was understandable. With more than 140 million followers, Musk’s reach is hard to replicate, and his acquisition of Twitter has made him a darling of the political right as he pitches the platform as a haven for free speech.
“Any candidate who announces on this platform will get the highest possible audience,” Musk tweeted in the run-up to the event. “It’s a smart move.”
In many ways, the Twitter event was classic Musk. It was hugely hyped, not fully baked and the talk of the internet afterwards.
He has been there before. Take his unveiling of the Tesla Cybertruck. He revealed it by having an executive throw a metal ball at the truck’s “armor” window, only for it to break. Or the time he appeared on a live broadcast appearing to smoke marijuana.
Musk has spent weeks trying to convince jittery advertisers and users that, after several rocky months under his control, Twitter is entering, as he said Tuesday, its “comeback arc.”
What might have sunk other business leaders seemed only to win Musk new admirers. Yet, this time, he was dealing in the high-stakes world of presidential politics, where the move fast and break things ethos is replaced by risk-aversion and opinion polling. This outing was the stuff of nightmares for campaign advance teams, whose very jobs are to make sure events run smoothly and technical problems don’t turn into the story.
After deeper review, some political operatives might conclude that it was the wrong venue for a campaign launch, where a candidate typically wants full control over a brief moment that has little margin for error and sets the tone for weeks to come. Instead, Spaces might be better suited for another kind of politicking, with the candidate sitting down for a more informal, deeper conversation that benefits from Musk’s reach.
For his part, Musk tweeted that “new account signups just went ballistic” in the wake of Wednesday, and his supporters drew millions of subsequent listeners to the event’s recording.
“The technical glitches notwithstanding, I think the other candidates are going to be missing something if they don’t figure out a way to participate on Twitter,” said Anthony Scaramucci, a former Trump communications director, who said he plans to support another candidate during this election. “My guess is if [Trump is] really going to take his candidacy seriously, he’ll go back on Twitter.”
Trump has said he doesn’t see a reason to return to Twitter. “It’s no secret everybody is begging President Trump to be on their platforms,” a campaign spokesman said. “They dream about having his influence and audience.”
On Wednesday, Trump was lighting up his own social-media site, Truth Social, with attacks against DeSantis’s debut. Musk shot back about those posts, tweeting that “the only reason people even know this is [happening is] because of screenshots posted on Twitter.”
As Musk struggled to proceed with DeSantis’s announcement Wednesday, Twitter clearly had the Biden team’s attention. The president tweeted a link to his own campaign’s fundraising website, writing: “This link works.”
This link works: https://t.co/9PzIJkseYI
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 24, 2023
The Wall Street Journal
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