Rating Ron DeSantis's presidential launch

By now, half of the GOP presidential candidate field is rejoicing that Ron DeSantis' start-up didn't go off as planned. The storyline is that Gov. DeSantis attracted a yuge crowd to Twitter Spaces, which caused Twitter Spaces to crash. While some critics complained that the DeSantis campaign got off to a bumpy start, the proof is in the campaign contributions.

Bryan Griffin, DeSantis's campaign spokesperson, announced that "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!" It's worth taking that figure with a grain of salt because campaigns have been known to hold back the amount of money that's been raised before launching.

Still, that's a pretty smooth operation right out of the chute. That website worked without a glitch. They had enough phone lines to maximize the haul, too. The next step is in seeing whether they'll continue operating this smoothly.

After the glitch-filled Twitter launch, Gov. DeSantis was interviewed by Trey Gowdy. This is the video of the first part of this interview:

This is part II of the interview:

For the most part, Gowdy's interview was substantive. DeSantis showed a little sense of humor. The first thing that jumped out at me was that he easily passed the Commander-in-Chief test. Regardless of the topic, DeSantis had a solid grasp of each of the issues. A President DeSantis would start building the wall on his first day in office. Also on his first day, he'd fire FBI Director Wray and tell Jay Powell to tell the Fed to return to restoring sound money and forget about the other stuff. As for Mexico, he'd finishing building Trump's wall and re-instate Trump's Remain in Mexico policy.

As for building a campaign structure, DeSantis is building an impressive staff:

The pro-DeSantis super PAC Never Back Down expects to have an overall budget of at least $200 million and more than 2,600 field organizers by Labor Day — double the staff that worked for Sen. Bernie Sanders' entire 2020 campaign, according to the New York Times.

"No one has ever contemplated the scale of this organization or operation, let alone done it," the PAC's executive director Chris Jankowski told the Times. "This has just never even been dreamed up."

This is now a 2-person race. Anyone that's in the predictions industry isn't an expert this time. I'm personally betting on Gov. DeSantis but that isn't a guarantee at this point. Still, his performance during his 35+ minute interview with Trey Gowdy showed an impressive command of the issues. Finally, the fact that everyone's talking about his launch means that the launch, glitches and everything, was a success..