New Hampshire Republican switches from DeSantis to Trump after disastrous Twitter launch

‘We can’t expect someone to run the country if they can’t properly run their own campaign launch’

A New Hampshire state representative switched her loyalties from Ron DeSantis to Donald Trump following the Florida governor's glitch-filled presidential campaign launch announcement.

Rep Sandra Panek was included in a list of more than 50 Granite State lawmakers backing the Florida governor for president earlier this month.

"After being less than impressed with Ron DeSantis’s official announcement last night, I am hereby switching my endorsement to President Donald J Trump," Ms Panek said in a statement.

"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."

Mr DeSantis started his campaign on Twitter Spaces alongside platform owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk and entrepreneur David Sacks.

The launch was marred by tech issues, with the live broadcast crashing several times and the sound dropping out, which Mr Musk blamed on the servers being overwhelmed by the number of people trying to listen in.

The meeting, which was supposed to start at 6pm, ended up kicking off around 20 minutes later when Mr Musk and other Twitter employees figured out how to keep it from crashing.

After the tech issues plaguing the Twitter Spaces event finally faded, Mr DeSantis was mocked for his voice.

President Trump, Mr DeSantis’s largest rival in the race for the Republican nomination, joked about the tech issues on his platform Truth Social. The 45th president posted a two-minute video on his Truth Social page which had been doctored to look like Mr DeSantis’s Twitter Spaces event.

Ms Panek told the New York Post that she was unable to hear anything during the Twitter Spaces announcement due to technical difficulties.

“Twitter Spaces didn’t support iPad users, so I couldn’t even listen to the DeSantis launch,” she said. “Not one TV news outlet could report on it. This was a miserable launch. Too much stumbling and bumbling.”

“With DeSantis, you’re getting Trump without the charisma. I want the real deal,” Ms Panek added.

Meanwhile, Mr DeSantis’s campaign team said they raised $8.2m within 24 hours of the governor announcing his presidential bid.

A donor making calls in the room first disclosed that the campaign raised $8.2m, and the figure was confirmed by Bryan Griffin, a spokesperson for Mr DeSantis.

The figure is more than the $6.3m that president Joe Biden raised in his first 24 hours as a candidate in 2019. It is also more than the $6.1m raised by former representative Beto O’Rourke that same year.