Ron… DeSintegrate?

Image courtesy of New York Magazine, Mario Tama/Getty Images

Gov. Ron DeSantis was supposed to be the “normal” Republican choice, at least next to the other guy. Trump without the baggage. MAGA without the crazy tweets. Someone whom tech bros, casual racists, and Christian nationalists could all get behind with his combination of low taxes and regular attacks upon minorities and the “woke” left.

But what if he’s not the savior the GOP has prayed for? What if he’s just sort of weird and awkward, doesn’t have an original bone in him, and is someone you wouldn’t want your children around? What if he can win big in deep-red, voter-suppressed Florida, but fails to muster enthusiasm outside the gunshine state? And what if he also comes with a lot of baggage of his own?

As DeSantis readies for a likely presidential run, these questions, which have not been seriously asked before, are starting to surface. And the answers should worry those in the Republican Party who believe he is a viable alternative to Trump.

Anti-DeSocial?

In the early GOP contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, candidates are expected to press the flesh with voters, sit down to barbecues and in coffee shops with them, and impress upon them that they are normal people who understand average working people’s needs. But DeSantis already has shown this isn’t his cup of tea. 

As the New York Times noted earlier this year, DeSantis “turned off some deep-pocketed donors during a previously unreported meeting when he largely kept to his own corner of the room and showed little interest in interacting with the crowd.” In his appearances, he prefers to use notes and talk about his policy wins. His delivery is fairly stiff, cold and impersonal. He often forgets to include others, like when he made Governor Kim Reynolds of Iowa wait 30 minutes into his speech before he finally realized she was waiting in one of two seats on the other side of the stage, where they were supposed to have an on-stage chat. When she asked about his wife and children, DeSantis shifted to talk about policy. Her attempts to inject more folksy anecdotes into their discussions failed, and he returned to policy again.

DeSantis has even been known to ask for bike racks to be put between him and local crowds. He doesn’t like selfies (after all, you never know if a liberal is trolling you with a snowflake that reads “fascist”), and his smiles seem forced and impatient.

He’s not, as they say, a “people person.”

DeSame as Trump?

Political observers have noticed something unusual about DeSantis’s mannerisms, especially while giving speeches. They appear to mirror those of Donald Trump, giving the Donald’s acolytes an opening. (Credit: The Recount)

Laura Loomer @LauraLoomer

Not only is Disloyal DeSantis an ingrate, but he’s a copy cat who desperately wishes he was Trump. He never had these mannerisms before becoming Gov. He tried to create himself in the image of Trump,but he’s the dollar store made in China version.That’s why I call him #RipOffRon.

When he first ran for governor, DeSantis tried so hard to win Trump’s favor and endorsement that he went on Fox News repeatedly to defend Trump and attack the Mueller investigation. That ploy finally worked, but DeSantis continued his obsequious campaign to keep hammering his loyalty home. After receiving the orange ticket, DeSantis ran this cringey (albeit tongue-in-cheek) ad showing him teaching his child how to “build the wall” and reading bedtime stories to his infant about Trump firing people while swaddling the baby in MAGA attire.

Adam Best @adamcbest

This isn’t even the most cringe ad DeSantis has made. He burst onto the scene with a Trump-worshipping ad where he taught his toddler daughter how to build the wall using toy blocks.

Now that he is possibly running against Trump, DeSantis is adopting not only the ex-president’s mannerisms but his policies, for example with attempts to show he is as much against supporting the Ukrainians in their war with Russia as Trump is, and even calling it a “territorial dispute.” Tucker Carlson would be proud, which is probably the point.

That stance is dismaying traditional GOP conservatives who have blasted him for betraying U.S. national interests and cratering before Russia. DeSantis has no clear policy behind his statements; when asked what he would actually do differently than President Biden on Ukraine, DeSantis refused to respond, instead getting noticeably testy with the reporter:

When I ask him how it should be handled differently, he refers to Biden being ‘weak on the world stage’ and failing at deterrence, but as that is not answering how it should be handled now, I ask again. DeSantis does not have anything to add: ‘Perhaps you should cover some other ground? I think I've said enough.’

Un-DeSanitary?

Politicians often get defined by anecdotes or moments exhibiting their true natures, and those moments can be hard to shake. Think Michael Dukakis riding in a tank. Or Mitt Romney and the 47 percent, whom he claimed would never vote for him because they don’t pay income tax. Or Hillary Clinton’s basket of deplorables (though she was right about that one).

For DeSantis, who hasn’t even launched his campaign yet, it could be the pudding. 

Many who have worked with him report that DeSantis has an unusually aggressive attitude toward food. According to one former staffer, DeSantis “would sit in meetings and eat in front of people… like a starving animal who has never eaten before… getting shit everywhere.” 

During a now infamous private plane ride from Florida to Washington, D.C. in March of 2019, DeSantis was served a chocolate pudding dessert. This would be unremarkable, except that he apparently didn’t care that there was no silverware: He consumed the pudding using three of his fingers, according to two sources familiar with the moment, like a toddler.

That image stuck with others, including comedian Seth Meyers, who hilariously laid into DeSantis on the behavior:

You ate pudding with your fingers?! That’s not very DeSanitary. You don’t get to use your fingers to eat pudding. Here are the rules: If you have pudding, but you don’t have a spoon, then you don’t have pudding.

Myers advised DeSantis to eat more like Donald Trump. And he asked his viewers,

If you were on a plane next to a guy who was fingerblasting Swiss Miss and asked to move and the flight attendant said, ‘The only open seat’s next to a dude eating KFC with a knife and fork,’ you’d say: ‘Yeah, I guess in this case it beats the pudding dude.’

DeSadist?

Early Friday morning, The Independent, a U.K. newspaper, amplified and appeared to confirm earlier reporting by a watchdog organization, the Florida Bulldog, that while DeSantis was stationed as a Navy JAG at Guantanamo between March 2006 and January 2007, he stood and witnessed the violent force-feeding of a prisoner who was on a hunger strike. 

And according to the Florida Bulldog, in a recent follow-up report to its original story, a second detainee has now stepped forward to confirm that DeSantis watched and allowed forced feeding of detainees.

The account is gruesome and the details quite specific, so I won’t repeat them here. But it will be important to see if and how the DeSantis campaign responds to the bombshell story. DeSantis hasn’t yet had to face hard questions before journalists on this question.

All this is to say, DeSantis may indeed have some terrible personal baggage and a dark history which which his campaign and the GOP have yet to grapple with. Added to the palpably awkward and anti-social behavior he has already exhibited at campaign events—without even having yet announced his candidacy for president—and it’s fair to ask whether the DeSantis campaign will fail to ignite enthusiasm with voters once who he truly is becomes clearer.

The proof, as they say, may be in the pudding.