A post made by Donald Trump on his social media platform, Truth Social, last year mocking Ron DeSantis over the chaotic start of his presidential campaign on Twitter has resurfaced as Trump, too, ran into difficulties campaigning live on the platform now known as “X.”
DeSantis’ campaign kicked off on May 24, 2023 with a virtual event on Twitter Spaces featuring owner Elon Musk and entrepreneur David Sachs.
He was widely mocked after being delayed by 30 minutes because social media platforms crashed and initially 500,000 listeners couldn’t hear anything.
At the time, Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, “Wow! DeSanctus’ Twitter launch is a huge flop! His entire campaign is going to be a huge flop. Watch!”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a news conference at Chase Stadium in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Aug. 8. DeSantis dropped out of the 2024 presidential race in January and endorsed Donald Trump. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a news conference at Chase Stadium in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Aug. 8. DeSantis dropped out of the 2024 presidential race in January and endorsed Donald Trump. Matthias J. Ochner/The Associated Press
On August 6, President Trump announced that he would be participating in an interview with Musk, and it was later revealed that the interview would take place on August 12 and be streamed live on X.
But the livestream got off to a rocky start, being delayed by 40 minutes due to technical issues that Musk blamed on a cyberattack.
Old posts in which Trump mocked DeSantis for facing similar issues began resurfacing and were reposted by the Kamala Harris campaign on Truth Social, where screenshots of the posts went viral on X and garnered thousands of likes.
Ahead of Trump’s interview with the Tesla CEO, Musk posted on X about the precautions he was taking to avoid technical issues like those that affected DeSantis’ campaign launch.
“I will be running some scaling tests on the system tonight and tomorrow ahead of my conversation with @realDonaldTrump,” Musk wrote.
About 20 minutes after the event was scheduled to start, Musk posted on X, “It appears we’ve experienced a massive DDOS attack on X. We’re working to take it down. In the worst case scenario, we will proceed with the event with a reduced number of live listeners and post the conversation at a later date.”
When the interview finally began, it lasted two hours and was watched by 1.3 million people, with Trump and Musk discussing the assassination attempt on him, immigration, the Ukraine war, and more.
Trump, who was previously very active on the platform, had his account banned following the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Musk bought Twitter in October 2022 and reinstated Trump’s account on the platform the following month.
Ahead of the interview, Trump published a series of posts about X, his first in a year, linking videos and images to his campaign website.
DeSantis, who was once Trump’s main rival in the Republican primary, and Trump are rivals but have sometimes supported each other.
According to CNN, DeSantis has not ruled out running for president in 2028.
Newsweek has reached out to DeSantis and Trump for comment via email.
Have a story we should feature? Have a question about this article? Contact us at LiveNews@newsweek.com.