After the glitchy and not-so-smooth rollout of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s campaign on Twitter Spaces, Elon Musk decided to give it another a go.
He used the platform to host Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr:
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) June 5, 2023
The stakes were lower as Kennedy Jr. has already announced his campaign.
The event was far less of a disaster than Elon’s first one, but still, it wasn’t without its glitches.
It got started eleven minutes late.
With a multi minute musical intro that seemed to never end.
Eight minutes later, it finally did.
Once it finally got rolling, we did get to learn a lot about both Musk and Kennedy Jr.
Here are seven key takeaways.
- 1. If Musk wants to be a political power player, Twitter Spaces doesn’t seem like the platform for it. The audio-only medium quite frankly made for a boring two hours. It was primarily two men talking inside baseball. RFK Jr. touched on the substance of some key issues, but an entire hour of the conversation centered only around Twitter and social media censorship. The two men largely agreed on the problems, creating little surprise.
- 2. RFK Jr. is the anti-establishment credible candidate America has had. He didn’t mince words. “We are no longer the deciders of our own fate. People who have no control, monied interests, large corporations, have taken over state powered.”
- 3. He is still a Democrat, and is running as such. Conservatives might come off as a bit disappointed on his environmental perspectives. He said investing in nuclear energy would be too dangerous. And that big energy companies should make payments comensurate the environmental and health damages their energy output did. He singled out coal as a paricularly nasty polluter, and one that couldn’t stay afloat should they be forced to make those payments.
- 4. He got specific on a few issues, like gun control. This was the first time Kennedy Jr. addressed the issue during his presidential run. He danced around it as best he could, but first made it personal. He brought up the assassinations of his uncle and father. He smartly weaves the controversial issues and brings it back to government overreach in conjunction with big pharmaceutical companies. On why he won’t explicitly increase gun control, he said, “Our constitution has been under attack in an unprecedented way. It may be seen as a systematic assault on our bill of rights. If it comes down to protecting our schools the way we protect airports, I’ll also look closely at the role of psycatric drugs in these events.” Some interesting novel stuff here. Reading between the lines, Kennedy Jr. looks like he’ll advocate to install armed security guards and metal detectors at schools, making his position on the issue more conservative.
- 5. Kennedy Jr. stayed on message the entire time. Everything circles back to corporate or governmental overreach. Everything. On guns, he notes Switzerland has proportionally, just as many guns as the US, but with no school shootings. But, he points out, the nation has 1/10th of the pharmaceutical drugs the USA has. He notes the National Institute of Health allows advertisements for drugs on television, something not allowed in Switzerland or most other developed countries. And that they create violent ideations.
- 6. Kennedy Jr. is the peace candidate, and certainly a dove when it comes to foreign policy. It’s actually quite reminiscent on his father’s stance on the Vietnam War during his 1968 presidential run. “We spend more on our military than the top ten nations of the world. We have five times the nukes of the Chinese, they don’t want to compete with us militarily. They have 1 and a half military bases in the world, we have 800.” In a tough on China world, Kennedy Jr. is taking the opposite approach. He also says he supports the Ukraine creating a ceasefire and will vow not to send any troops into the nation.
- 7. Kennedy Jr. came off as likeable, something that’s been a challenge for both former President Donald Trump and DeSantis. There was a little moment where his wife, Cheryl Hines (of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” fame) was brought into the conversation. “Honey, I didn’t know you were gonna do this,” Kennedy Jr. said in response when a listener had a question directed specifically for her to answer. “Neither did I,” she said with a laugh. She then gave a detailed response about her person feelings towards her husband’s presidential run. At the end, Kennedy Jr. closed with a cute story. “She made her living bartending, and was gonna invent a new margarita that had Xanax in it, and that was gonna be her solution.” I bring this up because it’s hard for other candidates to bring up a cute story about their spouse and get a laugh. Plus the whole moment was an unscripted, natural one. Hines had no idea she’d be answering a question, but she was game. She’ll serve as a great asset to Kennedy Jr. and shows that the two can be human, relatable, and speak comfortably off the cuff. In today’s ever evolving media world, that’s more important than ever.
All in all, the event was a bigger success than DeSantis’s one, at least in terms of functionality and benefit to the candidate. But Musk himself only saw 65,000 viewers at the stream’s height. If he’s looking to get the attention of the nation, and for them to take him seriously as a political arbitrator, this surely won’t be the vehicle to achieve that. But when it comes to Kennedy Jr., he came off as smart, prepared, relatable, and most of all, different. There is no when else talking about the mix of issues that he’s been advocating for. And that novel approach might just catch fire.
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