Elon Musk had cause to celebrate two big wins for Twitter on Tuesday when he secured exclusivity to Ron DeSantis’ presidential bid announcement while garnering more exclusive business from right-wing media.
News broke Tuesday that Musk will usher in the Florida governor’s official 2024 presidential campaign announcement via a Twitter Spaces interview on Wednesday, and on May 30, the social media platform will become the primary home of conservative news outlet The Daily Wire’s channel of podcasts.
A DeSantis campaign spokesperson told media that the governor will announce his bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination Wednesday night in a conversation with Musk, taking place at 6 p.m. ET on Twitter Spaces with moderator David Sacks, a tech entrepreneur.
Musk, who recently hired Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s new CEO, also confirmed the news at a Wall Street Journal event Tuesday, per CNN.
“I will be interviewing Ron DeSantis, and he has quite an announcement to make,” Musk said. “And it will be the first time that something like this is happening on social media and with real-time questions and answers, unscripted.”
NBC News first reported the planned conversation between DeSantis and Musk.
Twitter will then become host to Daily Wire podcasts, which will shift away from airing full episodes on YouTube beginning May 30. Each show will receive a corresponding Twitter account to distribute content and promote the shows’ sponsors.
“The overwhelming amount of positive feedback from our advertisers and audience after putting ‘The Matt Walsh Show’ on Twitter signals to us there is tremendous opportunity, which is why we’ve decided to distribute the rest of our shows on Twitter,” Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing said in a statement. “If Elon Musk stands by his commitment to make Twitter a home for free speech and delivers on monetization opportunities and more sophisticated analytics for content creators, I imagine we will invest even more into the platform.”
Shows migrating to Twitter include “The Ben Shapiro Show,” “The Dr. Jordan Peterson Podcast,” “Candace Owens Podcast,” “The Michael Knowles Show,” “The Andrew Klavan Show,” “The Comments Section With Brett Cooper,” “Morning Wire,” “Crain & Company” and the previously shifted “The Matt Walsh Show.”
Axios first reported that the conservative media outlet will place its content on Musk’s “largest free speech platform in the world.”
The decision echoes former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s move to Twitter after his ouster from the conservative news outlet.
Carlson announced May 9 that he would be moving his show to Twitter, which he called the only “free speech” platform left in the world.
The Daily Wire and host Walsh’s shifted his podcast from YouTube to Twitter after his YouTube channel was demonetized over his comments about transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Walsh referred to Mulvaney as “he” despite the transgender celebrity’s preferred she/her pronouns. Walsh also claimed Mulvaney is manipulating and misguiding people, wanting to “turn them.” Walsh said he had previously made $100,000 monthly on YouTube before the platform removed his right to monetize his videos.
Of the move, Boreing tweeted that it was common for Daily Wire content to be flagged or shadow-banned under YouTube and fellow tech giants TikTok, Facebook and pre-Musk Twitter.
