If you are enjoying our newsletter and podcast, please consider becoming a subscriber.Legacy media has a headline they repeat no matter what’s going on: Democrats in disarray. It wouldn’t 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 “red button.”Yes, it’s true, all of the worst people you know are fighting: It’s Republicans in disarrayrapid unscheduled disassemblyOn Wednesday night, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis attempted to launch his official campaign on the world’s second richest man’s platform, Elon Musk, best known recently for his affinity for replying to amplify Nazis and what he called “rapid unscheduled disassembly” of a Space X rocket as it exploded. It would be correct, then, to say the DeSantis’ launch experienced “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”That’s 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’t hugeThe tech problems were at one point blamed on server loads (Elon got rid of a bunch of servers thinking he didn’t need them). Co-host David Sacks claimed it had been “probably the biggest room that has ever been assembled online," to which the Verge editor (tech expert) Alex Heath retorted, “I have been in bigger Clubhouse rooms” and New York Times start up and venture capitalist writer Erin Griffith added, “the 12 million people attended a virtual travis scott concert in Fortnite.” After the claim to fame took on Elon proportions of exaggeration, she wrote, “more people watched 2 BuzzFeed employees explode a watermelon on Facebook in 2016.”elites whiningEventually, Ron DeSantis got to make his big announcement and his speech, which quickly devolved into the three white men running the show – the other co-host was venture capitalist David Sachs - complaining about “the elites” and the “media” 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 “Books are being removed from Florida classrooms and libraries because they are “pornographic, violent or inappropriate.”Fact: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’s The Bluest Eye* All Boys Aren’t Blue, by George M. Johnson* The Handmaid’s 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’t access books.boring The biggest problem with Ron DeSantis’s Twitter Spaces campaign launch, though, was as Jason Easley wrote on our Substack, that “it was boring, really, really boring. It is impossible to see how this dull as watching paint dry culture warrior can possibly defeat Donald Trump… Ron DeSantis sounds small time, looks small time, and he lacks the presence and charisma to effectively engage voters.”DeSantis 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’t 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’t you glad you weren’t?But I promised you a fight and a fight you will have. don’s 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 “Rob” – his new name for DeSantis?- for having a small “red button” while making concerning references to Kim Jong Un soon being his new friend.Don wrote:“Rob,” 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, “We can only hope this was a phallic reference and not a nuclear reference. One can’t be sure with Donald Trump, which is how he continues to get away with saying outrageous things that don’t belong in normal public political discourse.”don is funny for a brief momentThis was followed by a video of Space X exploding as it fell to the ground, with “Ron 2024” 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 “jokes” about everyone on the call being “gay” 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’s nothing Elon can do about it, which seems like a big loss for those two horrible people… 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’t 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 “working Americans” now. If anyone was going to bring more fail to this situation, it would be Newt Gingrich, but it’s still a surprise that he said this outloud on Fox.I’m 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’s also a weird way to excuse the lack of policy meat in Trump’s rhetoric. And frankly the dearth of policy that is good for those same “working Americans” in the entire Republican Party platform.won’t anyone think about Tucker’s white supremacy platformElon’s failure to launch twitter into the stratosphere of relevance
