What’s Happening:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis officially announced his presidential campaign this week. He did it in unique fashion, taking to free speech platform Twitter. Elon Musk hosted the live event, which welcomed users to watch through the social app.

And boy, did it break records.

So many people tried to watch live, that Twitter experienced technical difficulties. After some “initial scaling challenges” the event continued. And now, we are learning just how impactful this presidential announcement was.

From Daily Wire:

Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis‘ special event on Twitter Spaces Wednesday evening was “by far” the most viewed in the history of the company…

Musk confirmed the news by retweeting Sacks’ tweet and replying to another tweet that noted there were more than 700,000 concurrent users on the Twitter Space at one time.

At the time of this writing, over 3 million people watched the event after it went live. But during the event, there were 700,000 users watching at one time–the most ever for a Twitter Spaces event.

But that wasn’t the only big news coming out of this event.

There was so much enthusiasm for Governor DeSantis' vision for our Great American Comeback that he literally busted up the internet. Washington is next.

$1 million raised online in one hour… and counting!

— Bryan Griffin (@BryanDGriffin) May 24, 2023

Within the first hour of the announcement, DeSantis’s campaign press secretary announced they brought in $1 million in donations. That number might have gone up in the hours following, with the total even higher.

These are some of the strongest reactions to a Republican candidacy announcement that we’ve seen in some time. Many Republicans have thrown their hat into this race, but we didn’t see enthusiasm like this from Nikki Haley or Tim Scott supporters.

It is possible that DeSantis will gain tremendous momentum in the coming weeks, quickly eclipsing Donald Trump as the current frontrunner.

Trump has been attacking DeSantis for months, long before the governor announced his race. It seems clear that Trump considers DeSantis the only true threat to his re-election chances. But all the mudslinging hasn’t seemed to slow DeSantis down so far.

We’ll have to see what happens next.

Key Takeaways:

• Ron DeSantis’s election announcement was the most viewed Twitter Spaces event.
• Over 700,000 concurrent viewers watched the event; the recording has been seen 3.1 million times.
• In the first hour after the announcement, DeSantis raised $1 million.

Source: Daily Wire