If Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis really wants to create separation between himself and the OG MAGA Man Donald Trump, he needs to do much better, because his campaign is currently sinking like a stone. Maybe he could release a video of himself eating chocolate pudding with his fingers as he moans, “Mmm, yum. Look at me scoop big-boy helpings of pudding with my ordinary, adult-sized human fingers. Yummy yummers! Donald Trump can’t do this, now can he? Mmm, such big portions for Ronny Boy. Can Trump even hold a spoon with those piteous little raccoon nubs of his? Can we take that chance? And if that red phone in the White House rings at 3 a.m., will he be able to pick it up?”
While that tack probably wouldn’t work, at least it wouldn’t represent a vicious attack on some of our most vulnerable and misunderstood citizens.
As DeSantis attempts to somehow out-asshole Donald Trump, he’s digging deep into his bag of dicks and having them put together videos like the following. Be warned. This gets pretty gross. And weird. Let’s not forget weird.
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Watch:
In case you couldn’t see that through your vomit dripping down your screen, the video starts with Trump saying, “I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens.” He then affirms that he’d let trans celebrity Caitlyn Jenner use any bathroom in Trump Tower she wants, and tells Barbara Walters that transgender women will be able to compete in his Miss Universe pageant in the future.
Then the video shifts to a Ron DeSantis image in which lightning shoots out of his eyes as if he’s as cool as Dark Brandon; shows a headline that says, “DeSantis Signs ‘Most Extreme Slate of Anti-Trans Laws in Modern History”; flips to a clip of Patrick Bateman from “American Psycho” for some bizarre reason; and goes on to proudly intersperse more headlines about the awful, cruel things he’s done while, ironically, flashing homoerotic images of some extremely muscle-bound men—as well as a brief, almost subliminal, clip of Brad Pitt from “Troy.” Because, remember, this is an anti-gay video. Anti-gay. Seriously, though, I’m surprised the background music for this thing wasn’t “It’s Raining Men.”
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There’s more, but even though the video’s only 1:13 in length, I could barely get through it. But you get the gist.
Now, to say Donald Trump is too friendly to LGBTQ+ people—based almost entirely on what he said during the 2016 election when he was trying not to alienate suburban women—is pretty rich. This is the same guy who unilaterally decided transgender service members were not wanted in the U.S. military, and then abruptly announced that hateful new policy on Twitter.
But DeSantis is flailing, and his new video reeks of flounder. After all, DeSantis wasn’t always determined to destroy the LGBTQ+ community.
Earlier in his career, as a congressman, Mr. DeSantis did not seem consumed by combating the L.G.B.T.Q. community. At the time, he privately told a counterpart he didn’t care about people’s sexuality.
And when he first ran for governor five years ago, Mr. DeSantis suggested he would take a more moderate approach on some L.G.B.T.Q. rights issues, saying that Republicans needed to move beyond debating which bathrooms transgender people should use. “Getting into bathroom wars, I don’t think that’s a good use of our time,” he said at a Republican candidate forum in 2018.
But in this campaign for the Republican nomination, Mr. DeSantis has sought to highlight — and expand — his ultraconservative credentials in an effort to position himself to the right of his chief rival.
The new video drew criticism not only from Democrats but also from some in his own party, including the Log Cabin Republicans, which describes itself as the nation’s largest organization for “L.G.B.T. conservatives and allies.” The group, which endorsed Mr. Trump in 2019 and has used his Mar-a-Lago club for events, calledthe video “divisive and desperate” and said it “ventured into homophobic territory.”
Of course, the Log Cabin Republicans aren’t the only people who had thoughts. Some noticed that maybe this video wasn’t quite as anti-LGBTQ+ as DeSantis thinks it is.
And there was this message from a pro-Trump gay man who somehow thinks Trump is the most pro-gay Republican in history. (It’s a low bar, granted.)
And some folks were just gobsmacked.
The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman asked an important question—and for once, she didn’t save it for her book.
Meanwhile, DeSantis’ anti-everything crusade is further screwing his state’s economy, even as he promises to bring his governing style to the rest of the nation. Even as Florida’s vital labor force shrinks because of DeSantis’ anti-immigrant stunts, and Disney withdraws investments in the state because of DeSantis’ anti-LGBTQ+ stunts, two more organizations have now pulled events from Florida over the governor’s gleeful bigotry.
Black engineers and “Game of Thrones” fans are the latest groups canceling Orlando events and attributing their decisions to Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida’s political climate.
The National Society of Black Engineers’ 50th conference would have brought up to 15,000 visitors to the Orange County Convention Center in 2024 and generated millions of dollars in economic impact, the group’s CEO Janeen Uzzell said Friday.
[…]The Con of Thrones, which typically draws 3,000 to 4,000 fans of the “Game of Thrones” books and television shows, also announced this week it was pulling the plug on a gathering planned for this Aug. 25-27 at the Hyatt Regency Orlando.
Looks like being an unrepentant prick can get pretty expensive. Who knew?
It’ll be interesting to see how Trump responds to this (because of course he will). Knowing him, he’ll simultaneously say he was the greatest president for LGBTQ+ people in history while also promising to reinstitute the death penalty for sodomy. Because Trump just gets to say stuff, whereas the rest of us are expected to make sense every once in a while.
That said, this horrific DeSantis campaign video is unlikely to close the yawning gap between him and Trump. But while it might endear him to the “Sinister Six” SCOTUS justices who just legalized very real discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community via Friday’s decision in a made-up case, it does pretty much guarantee he’d lose the suburbs bigly in a general election.
That’s something, anyway.
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Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.
