Elon Musk said Ron DeSantis' disastrous campaign launch was the 'top story on Earth.' A quick glance at the global media shows the death of Tina Turner was far more talked about.

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Elon Musk said Ron DeSantis' disastrous campaign launch was the 'top story on Earth.' A quick glance at the global media shows the death of Tina Turner was far more talked about.
Elon Musk and Ron DeSantis.Maja Hitij/Getty Images; Joe Raedle/Getty Images
  • Ron DeSantis announced his presidential campaign Wednesday via a glitchy Twitter Spaces.
  • As newspapers reported on it, Elon Musk decided to claim it was "the top story on Earth."
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Elon Musk claimed that Ron DeSantis' glitchy presidential announcement on Twitter Spaces was "the top story on Earth" on Wednesday.

But much of the world's news was dominated by coverage of Tina Turner's death.

Looking at Thursday's print newspaper front pages, The New York Times only has DeSantis in a side column, the Los Angeles Times doesn't mention him, and nor does the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, or USA Today.

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Outside of Florida and political websites, the only claim it has to being the most popular story is with New York Post readers – where it's a joint-front page with Turner.

With 600,000 Twitter Space listeners before it crashed, there's certainly a big audience interested in DeSantis' announcement. But when it happens on the same day as the death of a world-famous singer, there's little claim that it can be the biggest story on Earth.

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Europe's front pages are mostly focused on its own leaders or the war in Ukraine, as well as Turner.

In the UK, DeSantis is only mentioned in one of Thursday's 11 front pages. Even then, the miniature headline doesn't mention Twitter: "Trump rails against 'disloyal' DeSantis."

Of course, Musk has often criticized the mainstream media, so maybe he's not referring to the newspapers.

Yet on Google Trends, there's surprisingly no sign of DeSantis among American searchers. US Google was dominated by "Tina Turner" with 5 million searches, followed by a rise in Nvidia shares, a PlayStation showcase, and Krispy Kreme donuts.

In other words, either it wasn't even the biggest story in the US, or it just happened to miss out on being in the top 20 Google searches.

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It's only on the UK's Google Trends that DeSantis makes the list — the following day. So far, he's just behind the singer Sam Smith, both with about 10,000 searches.

On Wednesday — the day Musk claimed it was the biggest story in the whole world — Turner was well ahead at top spot.

Insider contacted Twitter for comment. The company responded with an automated message that didn't address the inquiry.

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