Elon Musk Sends A Strong Response To His Enemies
© Courtesy of TheStreetElon Musk wants to erase the bad memory of his confrontation with Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis.
On May 24, the candidate decided to announce his presidential campaign on Twitter as part of his interview with Musk. The move was an unorthodox choice, intended to position DeSantis as an individual and introduce him to Musk's 140 million followers on Twitter.
Some say that these followers are the adoring billionaire fans. They do not tolerate any negative criticism of their hero and attack any article, even if it is somewhat unfavorable to the King of Techno as it is called in Tesla ( TSLA ) - Get Free Report .
After acquiring Twitter in October for $44 billion and deciding to make it a bastion of free speech, a platform where you can say whatever you want as long as it doesn't break the law, Musk's also backed by conservatives. A culture war against the "vigilance virus", i.e. progressive values.
Musk wants to change the narrative
The problem is that things didn't go as planned. The tech mogul thought DeSantis' ad would go down in social media history. Although the interview will be included in the platform's history, it is often remembered negatively. Twitter Spaces' live voice chat started about half an hour late due to technical issues. These outages have shut down hundreds of thousands of people who originally joined. So when the technical issues were resolved, the exchange between the two people was followed by fewer than 300,000 Twitter users. The media coverage was furious and unanimous: It was a fiasco reminiscent of some of Musk's controversial decisions, such as firing more than 69% of Twitter's employees.
This failure feels personal to Musk, who is used to impressing the world. In the hours that followed, he tried to downplay the stakes, saying the event received "tremendous interest" and Twitter saw a record number of followers, but critics weren't convinced. The inaccurate interview even led political pundits to conclude that DeSantis, who trailed former President Donald Trump in the polls for the Republican nomination, made things more difficult and will now climb Mount Everest to reverse the trend.
Musk did not give up. The billionaire wants at any cost to change the date of this event. He seems ready to seize on any argument, even if it means exaggerating the facts. That's what DeSantis did with the fundraising numbers announced by the campaign. The problem is that Musk was corrected by Community Notes, a fact-checking system he installed on Twitter.
"There's a lot of buzz around RonDeSantis announcing and discussing his presidential candidacy on this platform," the billionaire said, citing a May 26 CBS report that DeSantis "raised $8.2 million in the first 24 hours" after the presidential campaign began. . . Refers to the campaign. . "And what is not noise?" All-time fundraising record!
He then encouraged other organizations and presidential candidates to read Twitter for the latest news. "It's worth a watch for ads in general," Musk said.
He will not allow his critics to write history
Instantly corrected in community feedback, the billionaire is his weapon against inaccurate facts and fake tweets.
“This tweet is factually incorrect,” said the post from Musk, a fact-checking app that allows users to add context to tweets to protect content quality and reduce misinformation on the platform. Trump raised $25 million in 2019. If you exclude major donors, it's still $14 million.
He continued, "In addition, half of Gov. DeSantis' donations came from a fundraiser that started on the eve of Space. President Joe Biden raised $6.3 million plus online donations. From DeSantis."
The correction is a major setback for Musk, as it is a blow to his desire to change the narrative. But the billionaire's tweets show how far he is willing to go to erase one of his biggest failures. It also shows that Musk is unwilling to let his critics and opponents write history. The techno king saw in the interview a rival to media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who is being crowned king of American politics. during the past years.
The billionaire is also trying to dispel the narrative that he has politicized Twitter by lending a platform to DeSantis. He linked the social network to a political party candidate, officially making the platform the party's social network. Most social networks, be it Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or TikTok, do everything to avoid supporting politicians. They often limit themselves to initiatives such as encouraging their users to vote, but not to the official designation of a candidate.
