Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said Wednesday on Newsmax that technical glitches in Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' online Republican presidential launch hurt his 2024 shot.
Joining "Rob Schmitt Tonight," Huckabee called Twitter CEO Elon Musk's inability to manage over half a million viewers to the audio call launch party an "unfortunate" start to DeSantis' campaign.
"The technical glitches are just one of those things that you just can't have when you first show up," said Huckabee, himself a Republican presidential candidate in 2008 and 2016. "It's like the first day you're in the restaurant business, and everyone gets sick eating your dishes."
Huckabee then jokingly insinuated that the DeSantis consultant who organized the announcement on Twitter's "Spaces" feature is "available if somebody would like to hire him, because my guess is he got fired this afternoon."
"To be fair, DeSantis has plenty of time to recover," Huckabee acknowledged. "But you don't want your first moment out of the gate to have the bull throw you out of the stands before the second second clicks off the clock."
Later in the segment, Huckabee gave DeSantis and his supporters sound advice for the rest of the campaign season: Do not engage former President Donald Trump "in the battle."
"No. 1, Donald Trump likes it more. No. 2, he's better at it," the former governor explained as he transitioned into a story about his time on the debate stage against Trump in 2016.
"I was on that stage in 2016. We knew each other, and a lot of these guys were my friends. We'd watch one after the other say, 'I'm going to take Trump down.' Three days later, they were in the dirt, and Trump was rising in the polls," Huckabee shared.
One of the critical lessons Huckabee said he learned was if you attack Trump, "you will live to regret it and live to regret it pretty quickly," as all the candidates eventually did at the time.
"So, I'd tell DeSantis: run your race, do your thing, get your message out, but don't engage Donald Trump. He's a better fighter than anybody else on the political scene right now," he emphasized.
Huckabee laid out his advice just hours after DeSantis officially announced that he was running for president, facing off against Trump, former NATO Ambassador Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina.
Trump himself also reacted to DeSantis' technical issues on Twitter, taking to his Truth Social account and posting, "'Rob,' My Red Button is bigger, better, stronger, and is working (TRUTH!), yours does not! (per my conversation with Kim Jung Un, of North Korea, soon to become my friend!)"
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