Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is still trying to cobble together a presidential campaign despite having the charisma of a gasoline-soaked mushroom, and the latest from the "DeSantis War Room” is an anti-Trump, anti-LGBTQ+ video that is so terrible it almost has to be satire. Is this what a Ron DeSantis White House would look like?
Okay. Deep breath here. And hold it, and—
Holy salted monkey intestines, what the hell was that?
Again: Is this really the look Ron DeSantis wants to bring to a (checks notes) campaign for the United States presidency? Vote for the candidate who shoots evil Force lightning out of his eyeballs, America. Everybody's looking for a president with eyeball lightning.
And who hangs around with, uh, guys in gladiator outfits. And the dude from American Psycho. And GigaChad.
Well, we've learned something important today: Apparently the DeSantis campaign's war room is staffed by meme-obsessed 4chan edgelords. Yikes.
While most of the serious criticism of the video is, of course, based on its over-the-top homophobia, it's all so steeped in far-right MAGA memes and weirdness that most unserious criticism instead focused on the amazing, truly self-parodying crapitude of the DeSantis camp's efforts. Twitter responses ranged from "this is the gayest ad in the history of political advertising" to "I thought this was an ANTI-DeSANTIS ad!" to "this is the worst video I have ever seen in my life and who ever is responsible should be fired immediately."
Biden administration Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg perhaps best summed up the collective public reaction most succinctly in a CNN interview in which he archly noted that in his official role he has to "leave aside the strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled-up, shirtless bodybuilders.”
Yeah, Pete, there's really no way to "leave aside" that particular strangeness, is there? Again: Yikes. Republican presidential contender—cough—Chris Christie also filled his 2024 role of being the Republican candidate who's just there to dump on all the other Republican candidates, calling it a "teenage, you know, food fight" between DeSantis and Trump.
A teenage food fight featuring gladiator outfits, of course. Christ, that already sounds illegal in DeSantis' Florida. We're gonna have to leave aside that one too. And the bit where it seems to be enviously looking to steal some "Dark Brandon" energy, perhaps for DeSantis to use in lieu of having a personality, and the edgelordian way it leans into fascism's omnipresent obsession with hypermasculinity, and, like ... no? This is supposed to make Ron look presidential?
I hate to burst your bubble, Ron, but most of the people who would be swayed by a video like this aren't, uh, old enough to even vote yet.
