Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/24/23 EMERGENCY POD: DeSantis, Elon FAILED Twitter Campaign Launch

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

Krystal and Saagar react immediately after the failed Twitter Spaces launch by Ron DeSantis to begin his 2024 campaign.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Hello, everybody. It is little after 7 p.m. here on the East Coast. We have just knocked off Crystal from the Ron DeSantis, Elon Musk, David Sachs. Couldn't take anymore. Couldn't take anymore. At this point, I think I literally have brain and ear cancer.

For the uninitiated, it was a total and a complete disaster. We are not exaggerating. Glitches from the very beginning. We have a little bit of a highlight reel for everybody. Let's not exaggerating. Glitches from the very beginning. We have a little bit of a highlight reel for everybody. Let's take a listen. I'm pleased to introduce two individuals who've done more to loosen the grip. All right. Sorry about that. We've got so many people here that I think we are kind of melting the servers, which is a good sign. Might have surprised many, but not those of us who've known and worked with Elon for nearly a quarter century.

His commitment to freedom is willing to put his money where his mouth is, upset the narrative he's rolling. Let's see. So, yeah, I think so. Just to simplify, there's 3,200 people, Lauren. All right, great. So, let's see. It's like they just keep crashing, huh? Yeah, I think we've got just a massive number of people online, so it's service restraining somewhat.

All right, we're just reallocating more server capability to be able to handle load here. It's really going crazy. So, yeah, I'm obviously very excited to have Governor DeSantis make this All right, I think we're broadcasting. Man, I think we melted the internet there. Yeah, that think we're broadcasting. Man, I think we melted the internet there. Yeah, that was insane. Sorry. I'm actually doing this from David Sachs' Twitter account because it looks like doing it from mine

basically broke the Twitter system. Governor DeSantis, are you there? Can you hear us? I think you broke the internet. I'm here. I know. I think you broke the internet there. We had over half a million people in one Twitter space,

and it was growing by like 50,000 a minute. So congrats on breaking the internet there. Well, yeah. I mean, try some new things. It's adventurous. Yes. The value here is actually really high for people to hear directly from presidential candidates and to answer a Q&A live. And you can get a sense for how a candidate really is, you know, and where it's not just canned speeches and teleprompters. In fact, you can tell by the, you know, some of the mistakes that it's real. My personal favorite crystal is whenever they keep forgetting to pause and they're like basically on a hot mic um before everybody else so after exactly 25 minutes of glitches uh we finally did get to hear from the candidate the candidate uh governor desantis whose twitter video actually went out at 6 p.m by the way we'll be breaking all that down tomorrow in our morning show but reads straight straight up, Crystal, off of a

script, basically from his campaign ad, an entirely five-minute long presentation. And then from that point forward, David Sachs, and clearly this was a coordinated event, calls on DeSantis surrogates, people like Thomas Massey, who's already endorsed Ron DeSantis, Governor Christopher Ruffo, who's worked closely with DeSantis, Dr. J. Bonataria. I mean, none of that is bad, I guess. But, you know, ostensibly, this is effectively a campaign event that was coordinated, held on Twitter in a, frankly, a disastrous format. It was not to DeSantis' strength. So I'm curious. That's like the nicest thing you could say. That's like so diplomatic. Not to his strengths. Yeah. I mean, OK, so first let's go through the blow by blow, because regardless of like what happened after the initial disaster, already you've got the Daily Mail says Ron disaster.

You've got Fox News, which has been in DeSantis's corner, but they feel snubbed over the fact that he decided to do this bizarre Twitter launch thing instead of launching with them. They're going after him. I mean, what he said after the initial glitches almost doesn't really matter. Yeah. So let's go through a little bit of the blow by blow. So first of all, they launched the Twitter spaces. We couldn't get in.

I mean, we were trying. We were us and our team, Griffin and Matt. We're all trying to get it. You couldn't get in. OK, so that's the first problem. You can't even get into this thing. Then I think, Matt, we're all trying to get it. You couldn't get in. Okay. So that's the first problem. You can't even get into this thing. Then I think, Sagar, you were able to get in, but you couldn't hear anything. It was like static noise.

People recorded. There were Twitter employees talking about servers and what I mean, just total disaster. At some point, DeSantis leaves the whole thing. Yes, he leaves for several minutes, actually. And then they had to relaunch with the new spaces and apparently elon even though he was supposed to be hosting they couldn't use his account still they had to like clue to work around and the initial spaces that had crashed had over half a million people in it when you came back in you were about 100 000 200 000 and david

sacks keep kept making these proclamations, this is the most people ever gathered on social media. It's like, no, it's not. It's not even close to that. And this is for audio only. It's not even video. Okay? It's audio only. So it's obviously a catastrophe for Elon and Twitter.

It's a complete catastrophe for Ron DeSantis. I cannot imagine how he is feeling, like the amount of rage and despair he must be feeling right now. I cannot even wrap my head around. I have never seen a political event be this much of a disaster. And the other thing I was saying to you, too, Sagar, is like, even if the tech had worked flawlessly, this was a horrible idea yes like it had all of the energy people are saying online i'm this is not original people

it had all the energy literally of a zoom conference call meeting with your boss and it was hardly even focused on him all these other characters were coming in and much of this was basically an ad a really bad ad since it was such a disaster for twitter and twitter spaces you have even his surrogates thomas massian's coming in and oh elon you're so great so great what you're doing for the country what are we doing here this is the presidential campaign we have a little bit of that crystal we have some uh some portions of this where they're basically just talking about how great twitter and twitter spaces is let's take a listen to that what made you want to kind of take the chance of doing it this way

as opposed to just doing it on cable news or the usual way? Well, when COVID hit, I had to make decisions about do you go with the crowd or do you look at the data yourself and cut against the grain? So when Elon Musk stepped up to purchase Twitter, he paid a lot of money for it. And I'm sure because he's a good businessman, Elon, I'm sure you'll end up making money off it. But bottom line is you had to put your money where your mouth is, because I think you recognize that you can't have a free society unless we have the freedom to debate the most important issues that are affecting our civilization. That did not happen during COVID. The truth was censored repeatedly. And now that Twitter is in

the hands of a free speech advocate, that would not be able to happen again on this Twitter platform. Well, thank you. Yeah, we're absolutely committed to freedom of speech on a level playing field and just a vigorous debate. And hopefully this can be a platform that brings people of divergent political views. Yeah, I mean, the amazing thing about Twitter and things like spaces are that, although I happen to be hosting it, I had to switch over to David hosting it because my account was actually... There's too much interest. My account was breaking the system.

But it's really never been a mechanism before where someone could address the nation or anyone who wanted to listen to them could from anywhere in the world, the United States or anywhere. So I think this is a really profound change. Whereas with a public digital town square like we have here, it's possible for the public to choose the narrative.

It empowers the people instead of a very tiny elite cabal, which I recognize the irony of using that phrase. But nonetheless, it's true and judged by the results. First of all, let me say a big thank you to Elon Musk for buying Twitter and exposing all of this. By the way, I've never met Elon Musk, but I'm one of your biggest fans. I'm the first congressman to have a Tesla. I'm on Starlink. And I would have bought a Powerwall, but I'm off the grid. And you wouldn't sell me one. So I had to make one with a wrecked Model S. Elon, if I put down money on January 1st, 2022, that Twitter was going to be the last bastion of free speech on Earth, brother, I'd be about as rich as you are on that

bet right now. I mean, it's incredible. And Elon, I have to say thank you for taking the arrows and for unthrottling the accounts of all of us who got in trouble for sharing a New York Post story about a laptop. Yeah, that was one of my immediate takeaways. Crystal actually tweeted this at the time. And I just said, hey, you know, with respect to Elon and DeSantis, why would DeSantis want his campaign launch to basically be an ad for Twitter spaces? Like announcements should not be an advertisement for the medium. And once again,

look, I consider David Saks a friend. I think he's a nice guy. I really do. And I actually love his podcast, some of his stuff on Ukraine. That said, whenever he and Elon were being like, nobody's ever done anything like this before. I it's this is literally not true i mean like youtube has held events where millions of people are watching synchronously in audio and in video and like you said that was just that's video way actually harder to pull off so clearly you know twitter completely shit the bed yeah in their rollout of this the infrastructure was a nightmare and i also think this is a big indictment of the DeSantis campaign. Nobody picked up the phone and said, hey, are you guys sure? Like, are we good to go? Can we do a test? Like, can we make sure 100% there's no, you know, this is literally the job of advanced staff to make sure and you

know, you know, this also crystal like any time candidates and others are doing something high profile. I mean, hell, even if sometimes when interview people, they, you know, their team will check, like, what time is it going to go up? Like, can we do a check to just make sure everything is good to go? Like a pre-Zoom call almost, you know, I mean, these are very normal things whenever it comes to, you know, even mid-profile events. This is the highest, the high profile. You're on the absolute biggest national stage ever. And yeah, I mean, the big story out of it, unfortunately for him, is nothing that he said. Another reason why I think it was a huge mistake was it was long. It was plotting. It was over an hour. And pre-selected questions, pre-scripted answers, that is not engaging. It was difficult to listen to and to be engaged in, you know, and like, that's just not, it's not good radio, man. You and I do this

for a living the whole time. I'm like, ask him a freaking question. I'm like, dude, you know, get the pace going. Don't let him just read off of the thing. That's just not how these things are supposed to go. It made him look very small feel very small and so there's an advantage of i'm sure what they were going for was like oh people feel more connected to them it's more of an intimate setting you're having more of this like you're being let in on this conversation among these people that you've heard about but it didn't come across that way it came across as wildly inauthentic because everything was obviously completely pre-planned and scripted. So if your bet was this will be a

more authentic natural setting, well, you definitely blew it on that front. And then the advantage of a normal traditional staged campaign speech, you know, think of how much thought Trump puts into the optics of his campaign speeches and what's behind him and who's behind him and in the airplane hangar with his private jet behind all that sort of stuff. It gives you that that sense with the staging and the music and the presence like, oh, this is a thing that I want to be part of. And it also helps to enable you to envision this person as president, United States and commander in chief. So if you're going to skip out on that, you better have a damn good reason. helps to enable you to envision this person as President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief.

So if you're going to skip out on that, you better have a damn good reason. So like I said, even if the tech had been flawless, I think this would have been a disaster for him because it was so poorly planned. It was so boring. It was so plotting. It was so prescripted. It was so lacking in any sort of like all right let's do this thing campaign excitement launch energy that it was a terrible concept from the start and i also have

to say on like this and i talked to emily about this some this morning you know conservatives have been and i have been also very rightfully upset about collaboration between social media giant companies and government and then here you have this billionaire owner of Twitter putting his hand thumb directly on the scales in favor of his favored presidential candidates. Like, how can you argue that this is like a neutral free speech platform at this point when you've clearly made a bet in terms of this political race? And of course, people are going to assume, all right, what are you doing behind the scenes to try to pump this guy up

when you're publicly pumping this guy up to the best of your ability? Although that kind of fell flat, didn't it? I agree. I think it was a mistake for Elon to do that, especially for – he has a brand that – he actually had a decent amount of leverage with Democrats even before this. Glenn Greenwald, I know you guys talked about on the show today, that poll, showing Elon's likability ratings and all that. Becoming explicitly partisan is just not the right thing to do here. The second thing I would just say is hold a goddamn rally. You know, just just do a rally. He's got supporters. Yeah, it's true. He's a very popular freaking governor in Florida. You should have just put out a video. I mean, he's in Miami right now. And he should have just done a damn rally. And then immediately after the rally. I mean, right now, as should have just done a damn rally and then immediately after the rally i mean right now as you and i are speaking he's literally on fox news we'll be covering um all of that

tomorrow um in terms of his his uh interview some maybe some other things that he says but you know i mean looking at the takeaway it's not just us front page of the new york times desantis announcement is disrupted by twitter malfunction the subhead there is about what's going on with, Ron said, second front page of the Washington Post, DeSantis presidential campaign kickoff on Twitter, plagued by technical issues. If you look at the Daily Mail, it's like you said, they call them a DeFailure.

Off and ronning, that's what the top of New York Post is. That's the nicest one you could say. That's the nicest one that they've got. That's kind of neutral. Off and ronning is what we've got from the New York Post. They That's the nicest one you could say. That's the nicest one that they've got. That's kind of neutral. Off and running is what we've got from the New York Post. They're in the tank for them. Daily Mail. We've got a Trump react too, don't we?

Yes, I have the Trump reaction here in front of me. It says, Rob, my red button is bigger, better, stronger, and is working. Truth, yours does not, per my conversation with Kim Jong-un of north korea soon to become my friend for those who don't remember the red button is a reference to the fire and fury speech yeah the nuclear nuclear button not his best work in my opinion but i'm sure he's going to be having a field day with this for a long time and here's the thing too for desantis why this is a story

that may have may be problematic for him beyond just this moment. His whole pitch is like, I'm Trump without the chaos. I'm Trump but competent. And so when your launch is a humiliating shit show, it's hard for you to carry the message of like, okay, but I'm the one who knows how to actually, I think he even had a line in there. Like some people know how to tweet

and I know how to get it done. It's like, well, that's not really demonstrated with your launch today, buddy. And I do think those things could matter. Part of, I think, how Obama was able to defeat Hillary all the way back in 2008, even as this junior senator and upstart, was because his campaign had the impression of this thing is locked down. It's effectively run. It's effectively managed. Like, okay, maybe he is up to the task. Not a good first impression, I guess,

is like probably the most diplomatic thing I could say at this point. It was a bad impression. It gives it here's the other thing, you know, media is already out for blood with Ron DeSantis. So the thing is, it's your job to not give them anything to give them nothing to work with. So all they have to do is cover the text of the announcement, of the actual substance of what he is promising. And, you know, unfortunately for him, that's just not going to be the headline. Like I said, the Daily Mail, first thing that they lead with, finally underway after 26 minutes of glitches,

then rips Disney for, you know, injecting gender ideology. Like that could have been the headline out of it, and that's what you and I could have been talking about it for today. We will spend a lot of time tomorrow more a little bit on the substance. Most of what he wanted to initially focus on was the reaction to COVID, gender ideology. We will resign wokeism or a woke ideology to the dustbin. Pretty cookie-cutter stuff for his speech.

It is. I mean, it's very cookie cutter, Ron DeSantis. But I do think the decision to launch on Twitter and the choice of topics that he leans into, I mean, really no bread and butter issues, right? No health care, no wages, no very little, very light on those topics. It's all like the woke mind virus and DEI and ESG and all of these things that a lot of normal people would be like, what the hell are you even talking about right now? I think that that is a symptom of him being way too online, which is how you end up

thinking that it's a good idea to launch your presidential campaign on Twitter, a platform that even if it had all gone well, a tiny slice of the public uses a even tinier slice of the public has ever used twitter spaces or even heard of twitter spaces so i do think that that's emblematic of a deeper issue for him of you know is this really going to be what your average normal non-super online republican voter is looking for in a candidate because I do think he suffers from being in those like online conservative echo chamber conversations way too much. Yes. Yeah, I think so. He did a little bit in his speech. He was talking about net migration, all that stuff. That to me, that is the best case for DeSantis. The best case is,

look at the scoreboard. I won. I flipped a purple state into a red state. Millions of people moved to me because I did a good job. Now let's make America the same as Florida. Like that is actually a great message, but you have got to make sure that you're connecting it in a way where it can not only resonate with the primary voter, the GOP primary voter, which of course, you know, has all of these culture war things that they want to hear about. But also, this isn't just your kickoff to them. It's your kickoff to everybody.

So anyway, failure to launch. That's already what that's already what the Trump campaign is. Man, they are having an absolute field day. He's got to be. I've got my Twitter feed in front of me, Crystal. They have already released a video mocking and making fun of him, cutting together of his of the Twitter spaces. They've they've they've been saying like, oh, more people watch CNN that are listening

to Meatball Rob. So they're going all in in terms of against him. And look, I mean, this is part people will be like, oh, you're being unfair. Look, what we're doing is we know, Crystal, you and I, Trump will reach for anything. So will the media. It's your job not to give them anything to work with. You gave it to work with them. And he's going to he's going to be hearing about this one for a long time. You're running to be, you know, the chief executive of the country in a way, you know, you're running you're you're trying to run the whole show here. If you can't even handle your own campaign lunch,

it's not a great first statement about how you do managing the country. Yes. So we will have a ton more for you guys tomorrow, uh, more elements, um, and everything, a full breakdown of the DeSantis interview tonight on Fox. He's going to have also an interview with Mark Levin. We will have a breakdown of his video, even more thoughts and things about how he's positioning himself. We want to give everybody a quick emergency reaction. And thank you all for our premium subscribers who enable our ability for the whole team to just mobilize like this on a dime and post it and make sure it gets up to everyone. Breakingpoints.com if you are able. Otherwise, we'll see your beautiful faces bright

and early tomorrow morning. Yep, that's right. Personally, I don't know if I've ever enjoyed a presidential launch more. It was fun. Thank you. Thank you, Rob. My fiance was like, what are you doing in there? Because I was sitting cackling. I was like, I cannot. Yeah, it was too profane to say here, but I was I was I was laughing. I was really laughing. Okay was really something. We'll see you guys later. Bye. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Yeah, we're moms, but not your mommy.

Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. Listen to the Good Moms, Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcast. We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey.

We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family. They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like, he's like my best friend. At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit AdoptUSKids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council.

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