The parodies and putdowns are coming fast and furious after Ron DeSantis’ failed launch on Twitter Spaces Wednesday night. Truth be known, DeSantis probably is thanking God that the writer’s strike is going on, preventing him from being the star of the late night comedy shows. Last night’s travesty was material ripe for the taking.

Mediaite’s headline is, “Trump Posts IMPOSSIBLY Insane Fake Audio of Hitler, Soros and Himself Crashing DeSoros Campaign Announcement.” It is one for the books. Hit the link to Truth Social. The piece ends with Trump intoning, “This is a word from the real president,” and goes downhill from there.

Here’s Charlie Sykes’ take:

Of course, the usual folks tried mightily to polish this turd. But you could tell that their hearts weren’t really into it.

But, with all due respect to the crank, it was, in fact, a bad idea for a campaign to do this.

As David Frum explained on Wednesday’s Bulwark podcastthe GOP primary is essentially a contest for dominance — and going on Musk’s Twitter Spaces was an act of subservience.

FRUM: DeSantis’s message is ‘I won’t back down. I am so tough.’ But every time we encounter him in the presidential campaign context, we see him flinching and cowering a little bit. Turning to Elon Musk for protection, refusing to engage with Donald Trump. . . .

At every turn, Donald Trump is displaying dominance. And Ron DeSantis is displaying dominance aversion. And so are the others.

There’s been this pundit argument: Is it better to sort of deflect Trump and ignore him or to fight him? And there are a lot of smart people who make the point.

“Well, why don’t you let him burn himself out and let him throw his punches?” But once you understand you’re in a dominance contest. Good luck. You can’t do that.

There is just one question: Who is mean enough and tough enough to deal with Trump? And that doesn’t mean responding to every provocation because there isn’t world enough and time to do that. But at some point, you have to stand up and say no more, and hit back, and hit back so hard that you establish your credit with Republicans as someone who can’t be pushed around.

I have this theory that every campaign has a secret slogan that defines what it’s really about. And DeSantis’s secret slogan was Weak on dictators, tough on Mickey Mouse.

Here we get to Frum’s Leroy Brown suggestion:

One of the things that is strange is as obnoxious and provocative as the DeSantis campaign has been, it’s actually been kind of a risk-averse campaign because they’ve never said, “We either beat Trump or we lose to Trump.” . . .

And if you’re going to beat him, you have to go to his area of strength, which is — he’s Leroy Brown.

He’s the meanest guy in town. And you have to do to Leroy Brown, what was done to Leroy Brown in the Jim Croce’s song, which is leaving him looking like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone. And if you can’t do that, then Leroy Brown is going to do it to you, and you will look like the jigsaw puzzle with a lot of pieces gone.

You didn’t think it was possible for GOP politics to go any farther downhill. You were wrong. The only question now, is how much weirder is it going to get going forward?

Help keep the site running, consider supporting.

7 COMMENTS

  1. I’ve never been able to bring myself to click on links you provide to Truth Social. Something in my brain seems to freeze my hand so I can’t reach for the mouse. I have to admit I did move the cursor this time and put my finger in place, but still couldn’t press down. If you say I really should this time then I’ll do so.

    As for weird, we are in a perverted Hellscape version of Karen Carpenter singing We’ve Only Just Begun. I thought of a scene from North Dallas Forty where Mac Davis and Nick Nolte are in the sauna and Davis is recounting a wild night where his backup (quarterback), a hard core Christan and he were with a super rich couple that was friends of the owners and the backup QB was persuaded to drink. Turned out he couldn’t handle any booze and got wild. Nolte gets grossed out and says he doesn’t want to hear any more and Davis says (believe me it was already wild) “Don’t you want to hear the weird part?” Nolte responds “The weird part? The WEIRD part?” And Davis says “Yeah – it gets weird.”

    Someday a couple of years from now when you look back maybe you’ll remember this and realize that’s exactly where we are – an already incredible tale of drunken debauchery and effed up goings on… And THEN it got weird!

    • This is what I got:

      Access denied
      You do not have access to truthsocial.com.

      The site owner may have set restrictions that prevent you from accessing the site.

      • My guess is that one has to PAY to join. I can understand pros like Ursula who have to do such a distasteful thing in order to see what’s going on and report to the rest of us. If I owned a site like this or became a widely enough read writer I might do the same. Kind of like if the Klan or some other white power group was to hold a rally down the road in the heart of Cary (NC) I’d scrape up enough to but a confederate flag. And give it some special treatment. Then show up across from the bigots and drop it on the ground and take a whiz on it, then (because I’d soaked it in lighter fluid set that goddamned rag on fire! Part of me would always hate myself for the tiny amount that would go to people who make and sell such things, but the statement I’d make would I think justify it. So more power to Ursual or others who do what has to be done, even something so distasteful as to pay a fee to access a site like Truth Social I offer my thanks.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

The maximum upload file size: 128 MB. You can upload: image, audio, video, document, spreadsheet, interactive, text, archive, code, other. Links to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other services inserted in the comment text will be automatically embedded. Drop files here