Florida Governor and 2024 GOP candidate Ron DeSantis made headlines last week when his campaign posted a bizarre video that appeared to tout his aggressively anti-LGBTQ+ policy positions while attacking former President Donald Trump.
The DeSantis War Room — the account the Florida governor’s campaign uses to rile up right-wing, MAGA fans on Twitter — posted the one minute and 13 second video on Friday, making a point to attack Trump for some of his past remarks, including an interview where he said he supports transgender women competing in beauty pageants.
The DeSantis campaign video starts off with the Trump criticism but quickly takes a peculiar turn, jumping to a montage of photos and videos of DeSantis alongside images of shirtless men with six packs and scenes from several movies with over-the-top masculine male characters, including the 2004 movie “Troy” featuring Brad Pitt as Achilles, one of the greatest warriors in all of Greek mythology.
When asked about the video during an appearance on the OutKick show “Tomi Lahren is Fearless,” DeSantis said the ad was designed to contrast Trump’s previous embrace of LGBTQ+ issues to his current stance.
“Yeah look, I think 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,” DeSantis said.
The Florida governor added they wanted to highlight that Trump has since changed his rhetoric, becoming significantly more critical of LGBTQ+ issues — especially as such issues have become more and more popular among far-right voters, thanks in part to red states replicating some of DeSantis’ extreme laws in Florida.
“He’s now campaigning, saying the opposite, that he doesn’t think that you should have men competing in women’s things like athletics,” DeSantis continued.
