All eyes were on Florida governor Ron DeSantis on Wednesday as he sat with Elon Musk via Twitter Spaces to officially announce his 2024 bid for president. As we now know, the highly publicized event was met with technical glitches and service crashes for the first 30 minutes of its run — and Megyn Kelly doesn’t think that bodes well for Tucker Carlson’s move to the social media platform.
“The glitches were on Elon and his platform, to be sure, but how on earth did DeSantis’ team not make absolutely sure Elon and co. were ready?” Kelly said on her podcast, “The Megyn Kelly Show,” Thursday. “Let’s hope they work out these kinks before Tucker starts posting over there — because crashing with 600,000 viewers ain’t gonna work with him.”
As TheWrap reported Wednesday, DeSantis’ anticipated campaign launch with an assist from Musk went from stuttering along to going completely offline before the politician even had a chance to speak. At its height, the Space held 650,000 listeners who were left in the dark while moderator David Sacks could be heard saying, “It just keeps crashing, huh?” in the background.
Kelly categorized the fiasco as “what the kids might call an ‘epic fail.’”
“It was embarrassing and awkward and had the bewildering, unsteadying feel of a disaster unfolding before your very eyes,” she said. “You can’t look away and yet you’re viscerally uncomfortable watching, too.”
The newscaster emphasized, however, her support of DeSantis and Musk’s efforts to break away from traditional media (as the former Fox News anchor has herself with her eponymous podcast), and she even said she supports DeSantis’ policies (“most of them, anyway”). But still, Wednesday cemented an admittedly underwhelming event on both counts.
“Kudos to all involved for choosing a different medium and bypassing the mainstream media, which hates DeSantis and which is hated by most Republican voters,” Kelly said. “I support that mission, but its execution here, to put it kindly, did not work. How on earth were the kinks not worked out beforehand?”
Kelly also offered her critical feedback for the content of the announcement once it was up and running, questioning why DeSantis addressed his controversies from the top instead of staying “on offense” and saying that the questions asked from various panelists were too “softball.”
“There was no spice, nothing challenging, and nothing newsworthy,” she said. “I wrote a sentence to my team I didn’t think I would ever write: I miss journalists.”
Worse, still, she said, was DeSantis’ likability factor.
“Perhaps the worst offense was that through all of this, I didn’t laugh or connect with the candidate even once… He didn’t crack a joke at his own expense. He didn’t say something that touched me about America or the troubles we’re going through. He didn’t even tap into the righteous anger so many of us are feeling that has inspired many of his policies in Florida,” she said. “Maybe he doesn’t have that gene. Maybe he’s just a pen and paper guy who will pass the right legislation and that’s enough of a blessing. But he’s up against a man whose voters love him. Who’s up over DeSantis right now by anywhere from 30 to 45 points… It’s true adoration, loyalty, and love between Donald Trump and his base voters — the ones DeSantis has been trying to woo. Tearing them away with ‘nice policy’ and Twitter isn’t going to work.”
Watch the full “Megyn Kelly Show” segment in the video above.
