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In an apparent effort to outflank former President Donald Trump from the right, the campaign of Ron DeSantis (R) shared a truly bizarre video Friday. Notwithstanding the clip’s homoerotic undertones, its underlying message is quite clear: Nobody hates gay people more than the Florida governor.
The DeSantis War Room shared the video, which was created by another Twitter user, with the comment “To wrap up ‘Pride Month,’ let’s hear from the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate it…”
To understand just how bizarre this one-minute video is, we are going to break down bit-by-bit.
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
We shouldn’t shame people we disagree with. We should behead them. https://t.co/nXJWCL95ti pic.twitter.com/thITnl6IyM
— Jonathan Howard MD (@19joho) August 11, 2022
The first part of the clip features Trump stating at the GOP convention that he will do everything in his power to protect LGBTQ citizens. Even though his record in the White House did not reflect that at all, it’s tough to fault a candidate for saying it because that’s kinda the job.
As president, you are supposed to protect all citizens, and it’s not as though LGBTQ Americans are breaking the law simply by not being straight.
The next line of attack in the video comes from highlighting that the “Trump campaign website offers ‘LGBTQ for Trump’ shirts.” Again, that’s a strange thing to criticize someone for who wants to be president of all Americans.
Also, let’s face it, Trump will try to make money off of anything. He would probably sell “Fellow Violators of the Espionage Act for Trump” merch if there were a market for it.
Next up are a couple of clips featuring the former president saying that Caitlyn Jenner could use the women’s bathroom in Trump Tower and that transgender women could compete in beauty pageants.
That might not be where the majority of the GOP is, but it’s hardly out of the mainstream.
Then things get weird.
After a cross-dressing “Lady MAGA” appears on the screen, the second part of the video almost exclusively features clips showing how bigoted DeSantis is and how much LGBTQ Americans don’t like him.
And we say “almost exclusively” because headlines like “DeSantis Signs ‘Most Extreme Slate of Anti-Trans Laws in Modern History’” and “Florida’s anti-LGBT laws are unwarranted and un-American” are interspersed with brief images of Hollywood heartthrobs like Christian Bale and Leonardo DiCaprio as well as bare-chested bodybuilders.
Two of these images feature Brad Pitt in the movie “Troy.” Describing his role as Achilles in the epic film, Out magazine said the actor was “so hot in Troy he had his straight co-stars drooling.” So, that’s obviously something you want to include in a video touting the governor’s “straight cred.”
The entire thing is just nuts, and it is baffling that the campaign would want to disseminate this video.
Having watched it multiple times, there really is only one inescapable conclusion as to what the point of sharing it was: His team is extremely bad at this and thinks that it is a winning message that DeSantis only wants to be president of straight America.
