Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is suffering a costly ripple effect following his disastrous campaign kick-off on Twitter Spaces, causing new New Hampshire supporters to flip endorsement to Trump.
DeSantis declared his candidacy on Wednesday, which has since been slated by the media, with some calling it a “flubbed Twitter rollout” and a “glitch-filled” “flop.”
“It’s rare that something is so awful that in the middle of it, you know you’re witnessing a moment in history that will be both punchline and a cautionary tale for decades, but DeSantis achieved dubious distinction tonight,” NBC reported.
As The Western Journal noted, the repercussions extended to New Hampshire, where earlier this month, the Never Back Down PAC, part of Team DeSantis, was boating it secured the support of 51 Republicans who are in the New Hampshire legislator, one more than a list former President Donald Trump released in April. The DeSantis list caused some confusion after four Republicans on the DeSantis list had also been on the Trump list. Two later said they were solidly for DeSantis, one solidly for Trump, and one was for both.
But the list shuffled Thursday after New Hampshire state Rep. Sandra Panek decided that DeSantis’s Twitter glitch was a bad omen.
“After being less than impressed with Ron DeSantis’s official announcement last night, I am hereby switching my endorsement to President Donald J. Trump,” she said in the statement – a big blow for DeStantis.
“We can’t expect someone to run the country if they can’t properly run their own campaign launch. The stakes are simply too great in 2024 to take a chance on someone as unreliable as DeSantis — we need a proven winner like President Trump to take back the White House and Make America Great Again!” she said.
The release noted that New Hampshire state Rep. Juliet Harvey-Bolia fully renounced her endorsement of DeSantis and flipped to Trump following the Twitter decable.
“I’m proud to announce my full endorsement for President Trump, and only Trump. He’ll keep us out of war and prosperous as he has in the past. Ron DeSantis will make a great candidate in 2028. I expect Republicans will unite behind President Trump,” she said.
Trump joined in the condemnation of the DeSantis event.
“I tried for the first half-hour. After that, everybody just turned it off,” Trump said when tracked down on a golf course near Washington. “I don’t know if it’s recoverable.”
However, DeSantis was not apologetic.
“We felt that there would be a lot of buzz about it. And I think that was probably the biggest story in the world yesterday. And so hopefully we’ll get some people interested in our campaign who may not have been otherwise,” he told radio host Erick Erickson.
“It is some achievement to crash before you have even taken off,” ran an editorial in the French newspaper Le Monde.
“The muddled exercise came across more like a parody of a Twitter advertisement than the launch of a campaign,” the editorial said.
WATCH: Trump Trolls DeSantis with Hilarious Spoof Twitter Announcement
