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It’s been nearly a week since Gov. Ron DeSantis’ team released an ugly anti-LGBTQ+ video, sparking some pushback. As NBC News reported, the Florida Republican, whose presidential campaign is struggling, defended the video publicly for the first time.
“Identifying Donald Trump as really being a pioneer in injecting gender ideology into the mainstream, where he was having men compete against women in his beauty pageants — I think that’s totally fair game, because he’s now campaigning saying the opposite,” DeSantis told conservative commentator Tomi Lahren in an interview for her streaming show “Tomi Lahren is Fearless.”
Keep in mind, the governor and his operation had nearly a week to figure out exactly what to say about the video. This, evidently, is what they came up with.
Part of the problem with DeSantis’ comments on Wednesday was the degree to which they reinforced the larger point. As we discussed earlier in the week, the 73-second clip in question begins by targeting Trump for espousing since-abandoned positions that were more respectful of the LGBTQ+ community. This, in and of itself, was low: The Florida Republican’s campaign was making an unsubtle appeal to bigots, effectively saying that the former president just wasn’t hateful enough.
Yesterday’s defense was more of the same: DeSantis expects primary voters to believe Trump is sufficiently right-wing and reactionary toward the LGBTQ+ community now, but he didn’t used to be.
But what the Florida governor didn’t mention is that his video wasn’t just about the former president. It also touted DeSantis’ anti-LGBTQ+ record, throwing together a series of headlines and excerpts, including one DeSantis critic saying the Florida governor “produced some of the harshest, most draconian laws that literally threaten trans existence.”
For reasons that weren’t altogether obvious, the video also interspersed a variety of cultural references, which were apparently intended to make DeSantis appear tough. Viewers saw fleeting images of Christian Bale’s character in “American Psycho” — he portrayed a serial killer; at least one topless male model; Brad Pitt in “Troy”; and Leonardo DiCaprio in “The Wolf of Wall Street.” The apparent point was to encourage viewers to see parallels between these ruthless, debauched characters and the Florida governor as he wages an anti-LGBTQ+ campaign.
As The Bulwark summarized, “The ad’s intended message is that, unlike Trump, DeSantis will not show any humanity to gays and will be significantly more effective at targeting LGBT Americans by advancing the most ‘extreme slate of anti-trans laws in modern history.’”
I continue to believe that in a competitive Republican presidential primary, candidates are going to look for opportunities to pander to the party’s far-right base. A race-to-the-bottom dynamic is effectively inevitable, as White House hopefuls appeal to conservatives’ worst instincts and try to convince rabid GOP primary voters that they’re more reactionary than their rivals.
But if DeSantis looks at his video and thinks it’s “totally fair game,” that says far more about him than those he’s eager to attack.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.