Welcome back to “reasons why Ron DeSantis is a super weird dude who definitely shouldn’t be president!”
Last time we checked in with our boy DeSantis, his former classmate revealed the super chill way he would weaponize ignorance to screen his dates and a former detainee at Guantánamo Bay explained the sadistic ways he allegedly helped torture inmates on a daily basis. And now he’s back in the spotlight for trying to connect to potential voters in the oddest way I’ve ever witnessed from a politician since Hilary Clinton’s “Pokémon GO to the Polls.”
According to NBC News, within the pages of his new political memoir, The Courage to Be Free, DeSantis described himself as being “geographically raised in Tampa Bay” but, he wrote, “culturally my upbringing reflected the working-class communities in western Pennsylvania and northeast Ohio — from weekly church attendance to the expectation that one would earn his keep. This made me God-fearing, hard-working and America-loving.”
Now, I think it’s totally fine to love other states and feel some kind of emotional connection to them. But, my bullshit detector is telling me that DeSantis couldn’t care less about Pennsylvania, Ohio, or even Florida for that matter. He’s just saying this to score political points in order to win over more Trump-centric voters and, while I’m not one of them by any stretch of the imagination, I still don’t think it’s working. It’s just a load of incredibly insulting, reductive pandering.
Naturally, Twitter had an absolute field day roasting DeSantis and his faux country boy persona.
It’s absolutely hilarious that DeSantis won’t allow trans people to access to the healthcare they need, and deserve, to live as their authentic selves, but will “identify” as someone who’s from states he never grew up in with a straight face. I’m already exhausted by DeSantis’ political stunts and we’re still a year and a half away from the presidential election.
We’re going to need a miracle to survive this. Or, at the very least, a lot of wine.
(featured image: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
