This week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis decided to announce his 2024 presidential candidacy on Twitter Spaces, the newest feature on Elon Musk’s Twitter. Musk himself would be co-hosting the event, giving DeSantis access to Musk’s 141 million Twitter followers. Only after the Twitter launch will DeSantis begin the more typical campaigning, embarking on a series of campaign events across the nation.
DeSantis’ decision represents yet another blow to the power of the legacy media. Legacy media outlets have been fighting mad that DeSantis sees no purpose in granting them long-form interviews; while he’s happy to answer their questions – and to aggressively confront them – at press conferences, he simply does not trust that legacy media will ask decent questions or edit him fairly. Instead, DeSantis has merely ignored them.
That strategy has resulted in extraordinary hew and cry from our supposed journalistic establishment. This week, Tara Palmeri, senior political correspondent for Puck News, for example, attempted to confront DeSantis with a series of obtuse questions. “I am also Italian American like you,” she said, “if that makes any difference to you at all. Why are you against Disney characters? Which one is your favorite one?” When DeSantis declined to engage, she then called him a “paper tiger – a superficially perfect test-tube Republican candidate who, on closer inspection, is probably not ready for prime time.”
But perhaps prime time is entirely the problem. After all, it is prime-time television that made glitz and glamour the center of our presidential politics, gave Donald Trump billions of dollars in free media coverage in 2016, then proceeded to label Trump a threat to the republic and a probable Russian asset. It was prime-time television that elevated lies about COVID-19, turning DeSantis into the Enemy of the People while championing disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo as a hero; that endlessly trumpeted the false narrative that black Americans are at dire daily threat from police, resulting in billions of dollars of damage from race riots; that ceaselessly promotes the notion that boys can be girls and vice versa.
The same legacy media that pushed those lies now pushes a bottomless well of lies about DeSantis as well: that his wife Casey is like Lady Macbeth; that Florida has banned gay Americans by passing a “Don’t Say Gay” bill that, in reality, merely prevents the sexual indoctrination of children; that black Americans are at existential threat in the state; that books are being banned at scale.
Why, precisely, should a politician like DeSantis trust them?
He doesn’t. And now, thanks to the open forum provided by Musk, he doesn’t need to use them to promote his candidacy. He can simply go directly to the people. This is merely an extension of the strategy Donald Trump used so successfully in 2016 when his Twitter account became the most magnetic media property on the planet – only now Trump has relegated himself to Truth Social, even after Musk reinstated his Twitter account.
In any case, the legacy media – instead of re-examining their own biases and asking just why candidates of the Right refuse to appear on their air – have decided to target Musk and Twitter. They suggest that Musk is the newest threat to the republic – after all, if he weren’t, would DeSantis be using Twitter for his launch?
Conservatives no longer need the approval of reporters at The New York Times. They no longer need to suffer the indignities of skewed grilling at the hands of partisan hacks who work for the alphabet networks. Times have changed. And DeSantis’ Twitter launch is just the latest evidence.
Ben Shapiro, 39, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” and co-founder of Daily Wire+. He is a three-time New York Times bestselling author; his latest book is “The Authoritarian Moment: How The Left Weaponized America’s Institutions Against Dissent.”
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Good for DeSantis. I like him don’t trust the MSN. Too many opinionated journalists. Always looking for a “gotcha” question. Not providing you with actual factual information.
Excellent article.
Good move for DeSantis; good move for Musk.
The MSM is stupid!
nice Audioless campaign announcement Elon.
i haven’t laughed that hard in years lol
YOU HAVEN’T HEARD THE NEWS BRANDON IS GOING TO ASK DYLAN MULVANY TO BE HIS RUNNING MATE IN 2024. I CAN SEE BRANDON SNIFFING HIS HAIR ALREADY!
Assuming the U.S. Military Steps in and abides 100% by the Original Constitution, there should not be a 2024 election! We do not have to wait for rightful justice to prevail. It is the responsibility of the Military to try and convict every traitor in DC, also any entity supporting the US Corporation and so-called elites!
Hope so Hooray Yes
Watch NewsMax
For as long as I can remember we have had to listen to MSM and then to Fox and try to determine who was telling the truth. All of them have been guilty of telling us what they wanted us to know. They have not been lying as much as just not telling us the whole story, the spin. If you want to know the truth in this country, you have to search for it. It would be nice to finally have news we could believe and trust.
When Democrats are involved the legacy media becomes the state media. The state media then circles the wagons around any Democrat to protect them.
That DeSantis has gained the ire of the radical left is proof that he is a good person. We face the existential threats of Chinese aggression, including the tsunami of fentanyl killing hundreds of thousands, and the brilliant Tara Palmeri asks who his favorite Disney character is! What a pile of horse dung. I am glad DeSantis is making the Democratic presstitutes irrelevant.
I hate to break it to anyone that believes otherwise, but elon musk is not a conservative and never was. Look no further than baphomet’s recent TWITter CEO choice.. He’s playing the “white hat” in the w.e.f.’s version of good cop-bad cop; nothing more.
I always thought that legacy was something left behind to be remembered and given credit. but then credit like consequences can be positive or negative. The legacy media is definitely a negative legacy and seems to be proud of the fact. Reading Palmeri’s questions above made me think that those were questions asked by a school age child; who is your favorite Disney character? She just wants to stir up controversy. It makes her appear immature and childish. Who made her the authority and judge on personal integrity? She might be an Italian American but she is not anything like DeSantis. She had better remove the log from her own eyes before she tries to take the splinter from someone else’s eye.
Was so glad to see DeSantis thumb is nose @MSM… those people twist everything to their own narratives. MSM has made their programming irrelevant, except to the dumbest of the dumb. Unfortunately, the DotD still vote. …and to that sleazy female Italian ‘journalist,’ who cares what DeSantis’ favorite Disney character is? Get real. There are serious situations and crises at stake. Oh yes, and Biden as ‘leader of the free world.’ What a joke. He can’t even find the toilet paper or his way out of the bathroom. What a disgrace.
The MSM is the propaganda outlets for the left and dems that serve them. They are the smear campaign against any GOP candidate. Soros is paying them via their lackey owners.
Until all this stops DeSantis is doing it right by going on Twitter.
Beat them at their own game.
Musk’s Free Speech Schizophrenia
“Censor not, lest ye be censored,” Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Twitter, tweeted recently. Since purchasing Twitter, Musk has been vilified by the far left and liberal activist community for pledging to restore free speech on the platform, ostensibly allowing more conservative and right-wing voices space on one of the world’s largest and most influential social media sites.
That very same day, Monday, April 24, several notable right-wing dissidents were unceremoniously deplatformed and banned on Twitter with no explanation given. Popular talk radio personality James Edwards, the longtime host of The Political Cesspool, Dr. Kevin MacDonald, one of the leading dissident intellectuals who edits The Occidental Observer, Dr. Tom Sunic, a Croatian-American former diplomat, academic, and author, along with countless others had their increasingly popular Twitter accounts permanently banned.
Musk with a consortium of conservatives need to buy out ABC, or NBC, or CBS and then fired most of the leftists ultra liberal Marxists that work there
DEPORT ALL liberals, illegals AND THE ONCE HONORABLE, fbi, STAT, TO MAGA
Anything that works to destroy the marxist democrat media machine of propaganda is a good thing for Freedom and America!
It’s obvious that the mainstream media,democrat party,establishment Washington DC, long term bloated government agencies,the fbi,cia,and justice department are all 100% or partially co-conspirators to destroy Freedom and America.
They used to hide in the shadows to operate,now they blatantly show it down Real Americans throats.
They MUST be removed and actual control needs to be returned to We the People.
THROW THEM OUT, reduce the government bureaucracy, restore Faith, Freedom , and the American way!
The presumption is that Twitter under Musk will be an alternative to contemporary Media. What if after initial hoopla,Twitter settles down into being simply another branch of Main Stream Media? Your left arm and your right arm are attached to the same body controlled by the same mind. What if there is more to things than what we see? Just where does the Buck Stop?
The USA will be a very sad & misinformed country if all of the news came from Twitter & Truth Social. I think the majority of people do not subscribe to either one of these platforms, but see bits & pieces cuz they make the news by some comments. Think back & ask yourself if there is a reason that some people want to control the media & post whatever they want to push on people ?