Rep. Ron DeSantis’s campaign had a high and then a low in the span of a few hours last night. He won the Republican primary for governor in Florida—high. Then he went on Fox News and said choosing Democrat Andrew Gillum, who is African American, would be a bad decision for Floridians because he would “monkey this up.” Low. Democrat Andrew Gillum is the first black gubernatorial candidate from a major party in Florida history, mind you. DeSantis also described Gillum as “articulate.” His campaign explained that the choice of words was in regards to “socialism,” and who is to say. Normally we might all agree that DeSantis’s choice of words was poor. But when you are on television, talking about how the biggest white supremacist apologist in the country, Donald Trump is endorsing you and congratulating you, it’s hard to give you the benefit of the doubt when it comes to race and racial sensitivity.
In the hopes of clearing things up, Republican Communications Strategist Liz Mair went to Twitter to explain how Ron De Santis could have been really racist and also “clever,” in a racist kind of way.
Oh boy.
Realizing that Liz Mair just stepped in a big pile of “you are not good at your job,” she followed that tweet up with this.
“He might be pretty inarticulate and not very sensitive.”
Look at what just went down. Liz Mair, Republican strategist for the likes of Scott Walker and Roy Blunt and Rick Perry, makes a carefully crafted racist statement, then realizing she just outed herself as someone who thinks long and deeply about crafting racist sentiments, completely throws Republican DeSantis under the bus.