Things are not going well for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) as he tries (and fails) to be the 2024 GOP presidential nominee.
How badly is the DeSantis 2024 campaign floundering? Video from a weekend campaign event in Iowa is emblematic of the entire DeSantis bid for the White House.
HuffPost reports that at one point during the Iowa event, a noted prankster tried to give the Florida governor a dubious honor.
DeSantis, who is in Iowa with hopes of landing the Republican presidential nomination, was speaking at a town hall when he was interrupted by Davram Stiefler of the progressive comedy duo The Good Liars, video captured by reporters showed.
“Governor DeSantis, I want to present to you this participation trophy,” Stiefler said. “Now, probably not gonna win the election, right? But we’re proud of you for trying.”
DeSantis weakly replied, “I don’t need participation trophies. Sorry, buddy.”
“He’s special, he’s unique, and he’s our little snowflake,” Stiefler told the crowd.
📍Atlantic, Iowa — a man came up to DeSantis at his town hall & tried to hand him a participation trophy. He said DeSantis he “probably won’t win the election.” He also called DeSantis “our favorite snowflake.” pic.twitter.com/fTEY9Y4kM9
Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis made it clear this week that she wholeheartedly supports the right-wing culture wars her husband Ron has made the centerpiece of his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, despite polls showing that such an approach is not the least bit popular with most voters.
Mrs. DeSantis even went so far as to launch what she calls “Mamas for DeSantis,” MSNBC’s Ja’han Jones reports.
Casey DeSantis, wife of Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is set to relaunch a group focused on portraying her husband as a friend to “mamas” everywhere, as his presidential campaign struggles with severe image problems.
She first launched “Mamas for DeSantis” — which appears to be a Moms for Liberty knockoff — to aid her husband’s gubernatorial re–election bid in 2022. At the time, Casey DeSantis claimed her goal was to sign up “a million mamas across the state of Florida.” She’s slated to relaunch the group at an Iowa campaign stop on Thursday — her first solo appearance on the campaign trail.
We will not allow you to exploit the innocence of our children to advance your agenda.
When you come after our kids, we fight back.
We are no longer silent.
We are united.
We are Mamas for DeSantis.
…and we will elect @RonDeSantis President of the United States.
But as former Florida congressman David Jolly noted Saturday during an appearance on MSNBC, all Casey DeSantis is managing to do is reinforce why so many people will never cast a ballot for her husband.
“Casey DeSantis is a fairly compelling political figure in Florida and now nationally. For many, she’s the brighter side to Florida’s angry governor. For others, she’s become America’s Karen. And I think that’s the ultimate disconnect here with a campaign that needs to embrace more constituencies to get to the White House.”
Jolly added:
“Look, she is a more effective messenger than Ron DeSantis, but if all she is doing is amplifying the wrong message, she’s actually clarifying Ron DeSantis’ weaknesses. And so this, this ideology — the DeSantis doctrine, if you will — that our culture wars are the most pressing moments, and we are going to invent these culture wars to terrify voters? That’s simply not a message that resonates. So as I like to say, it doesn’t matter if it’s presented in heels or boots, the DeSantis doctrines are losing one. We’re gonna learn that the more Casey DeSantis gets out there.”
“I called her, I called her this, you know, ‘Serena Waterford wannabe’ needs to cut it out. We see you. So there’s all kinds of names for her. She needs to stop trying to measure the drapes in the White House and think that she’s some kind of Jackie O. reincarnate. I mean, Casey DeSantis. Keep an eye on her though. She’s a wiley figure.”
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg absolutely destroyed Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis for a bizarre anti-LGBTQ ad he released online, suggesting that the governor might be more than a bit insecure about his own manliness.
The ad, which as been roundly condemned, NBC News reports, left both Democrats and Republicans shaking their heads.
DeSantis’ campaign reposted a video to Twitter last week showing overtures to the LGBTQ community by Trump over the years, including footage of him saying that he would “do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens” during a speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016. Trump issued the remarks in the wake of the deadly mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
The second part of the video shifts to a focus on DeSantis that appears to attempt to portray him as the paragon of masculinity. Thumping background music is accompanied by images of DeSantis, shirtless muscular men and headlines about the anti-LGBTQ policies DeSantis signed into law.
Here’s the ad in question:
To wrap up “Pride Month,” let’s hear from the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate it…
— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) June 30, 2023
Log Cabin Republicans, the largest LGBT Republican organization, condemned the ad, issuing a statement which reads, “Today’s message from the DeSantis campaign War Room is divisive and desperate. Republicans and other commonsense conservatives know Ron Desantis [sic] has alienated swing-state and younger voters.”
Buttigieg was asked for his take on the advertisement during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.
“You know, I’m going to choose my words carefully, partly because I’m appearing as secretary, so I can’t talk about campaigns,” Buttigieg told host Dana Bash.
“I’m going 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. And just get to the bigger issue that that is on my mind whenever I see this stuff in the policy space — which is, again, who are you trying to help? Who are you trying to make better off? And what public policy problems do you get up in the morning thinking about how to solve?”
Buttigieg then referenced recent infrastructure initiatives he unveiled during visits to Kentucky and North Dakota.
“These are the kinds of problems that most of us got into government, politics and public service in order to work on. And I just don’t understand the mentality of somebody who gets up in the morning thinking that he’s going to prove his worth by competing over who can make life hardest for a hard-hit community that is already so vulnerable in America.”
DeSantis may think his divisive rhetoric and ads will help him win in 2024, but he’s wrong. The vast majority of this country is sick and tired of bigotry disguised as patriotism and hatred wrapped in the guise of domestic policy.
Proving yet again that the biggest snowflakes on the planet are those on the political right end of the spectrum, they’re in full meltdown mode over at Fox News because an article from the Daily Beast dared to refer to Casey DeSantis, wife of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who is also seeking the 2024 GOP Presidential nomination as “Walmart Melania.”
Katie Baker wrote this about Mrs. DeSantis, and quite frankly, it’s on-point in more than a few ways:
The First Lady of Florida showed up on the campaign trail in Iowa this weekend wearing a ghastly black leather jacket—American flag on the front, an alligator and the silhouette of her state on the back, with the sneering words, “Where Woke Goes to Die”—that brought to mind nothing so much as the racks of a Red State big-bin store where it would be retailing for $24.99.
To be fair, Casey DeSantis wore the bomber to a charity biker rally and I’m sure the campaign intended it to be a viral moment, like Melania Trump’s infamous “I Really Don’t Care” coat that the former First Lady donned to check out the border crisis.
But it was the title of Baker’s article, “Casey DeSantis is the Walmart Melania” that drew the ire of the gang at Fox’s “Outnumbered,” where the discussion soon turned to how it was yet another attack on average Americans, though they failed to explain what’s “average” about either Ron or Casey DeSantis.
According to Emily Compagno, who was one of the guests on “Outnumbered,” Baker’s article was a slap at every American who struggles to make ends meet and therefore shops at Walmart.
“This is why it is so repetitively disheartening to open up the paper and read what people actually think of us. Us. We are the ones who put food on our table. We earn our income. We fly the American flag. We wear clothes from where we can afford proudly, and rightly so.”
….
“We disgust the elitist left. We disgust them by existing and by being proud of being American, being proud of being modest and humble and coming from humble beginnings and moderate ends.”
“We disgust the elitist left. We disgust them by existing and by being proud of being American, being proud of being modest and humble and coming from humble beginnings and moderate ends” pic.twitter.com/99p6dRE5zp
We? Who in the hell is Compagno trying to pretend she is? Because the truth is that she’s a wealthy attorney and TV host who can afford to shop anywhere she wants and probably doesn’t hang out around Walmart very much. After all, she has a net worth of millions.
Casey DeSantis, by many reports, is a conniving and cutthroat spouse who protects her husband because she sees herself getting ahead as a result of being his wife.
But here’s some free advice for Casey, Ron, and the gang at Fox: You’d better grow some thicker skin because the barbs are only going to get sharper from this point forward.
Or, as Harry Truman once wisely advised, If you can’t stand the heat, get the hell out of the kitchen.
Bless his tiny, coal black heart, Donald Trump Jr. so desperately wants to be loved by his father — disgraced and indicted former president Donald Trump — and yet even when Junior tries to take a cheap shot at one of his old man’s main rivals for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, he winds up humiliating himself and trolling his daddy.
On his podcast Thursday, Don Jr. suggested that DeSantis had a bad week, noting that the formal rollout of his campaign on Twitter had been filled with glitches and other technical problems.
Junior also suggested that DeSantis had sounded “nasally” and “effeminate” when he spoke.
Just one small problem: The indicted ex-president’s son accidentally inserted his pop’s name instead of DeSantis’, remarking, “Trump has the personality of a mortician, and the energy that makes Jeb Bush look an Olympian.”
Junior goes on a rant that is supposed to be about Desantis, but he misreads his script:
“Trump has the personality of a mortician, and the energy that makes Jeb Bush look an Olympian.” pic.twitter.com/iOdUbTQLyS
Maybe Junior should have left out the happy nose dust before he hit live – lol 😆
— Tracey Jennings Cavasin (@CavasinTracey) May 26, 2023
Someone needs to tell him he got it all wrong if he's trying to hype his father.
— The Empowered Man Podcast 🇾🇪 🇵🇸 (@thecomforter_1) May 26, 2023
That's what happens when you snort too much coke before you make a video. However it did make him say one true thing. Trump indeed has the charisma of a mortician. That's because he's used to talking to crowds of the walking dead. pic.twitter.com/zXODJvgOF5
