Until last night, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida's campiagn had essentially become a minor nuisance. His floundering campaign, which managed the incredible feat of mostly hiring either people who were still bitter that Donald Trump beat Ted Cruz in 2016, or people who were bitter that Donald Trump wasn’t actually the Jew-hating David Duke clone the press (and rival campaigns) painted him as, could charitably have been looked at as a trial balloon: a chance to get all the kinks worked out when he had no chance at actually winning anything, and to set himself up for a genuine run at the job in 2028, in the event that President Trump either didn’t win, or (please God, no) selected another Vice President who turned out—like Mike Pence—to be a dud.
In other words, annoying though his “more-conservative-than-thou” strategy (which really was recycled from Ted Cruz) was, he wasn’t actually doing any harm other than the psychic damage to the audience of having to watch his cringeworthy debate performances and speeches, which carried the same desperate energy as a Tier 3 subscriber spamming an e-girl’s Discord account with scorned love letters.
However, after last night, I’m sorry to say it, but we may have overestimated Sanctimonious Ron. Because last night, DeSantis’s desperation turned, as is the case with all simps, into pure, white-hot loathing for anyone whose affections the object of their adoration actually returns. And so, like one moderator for Twitch streamer Amouranth who huffily quit when he discovered m'lady was married, DeSantis—perhaps realizing that the electorate was similarly unavailable —decided to pull the scummiest desperation play he could and literally hand Joe Biden an entire economic narrative. In short, he scumbagged Trump.
“And you know who else is missing in action?” smarmed DeSantis from under a suit so cavernous that it made him look like a snot-nosed kid wearing daddy’s clothes. “Donald Trump is missing in action. He should be on this stage tonight. He owes it to you to defend his record where they added $7.8 trillion to the debt. That set the stage for the inflation that we have now.”
I’d like to say that my comment about Joe Biden was just speculation, but unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Biden himself has since literally tweeted out DeSantis’ remarks, virtually unaltered except for the cheeky “I’m Joe Biden and I approve this message” tacked on at the end.
And honestly? Why wouldn’t Biden approve that message? In two short sentences, DeSantis gave Biden a cleancut way to blame Trump for inflation and thus to wriggle out from the unpopular albatross around his neck that is so-called Bidenomics. As I dubbed it back in 2021—Bidenflation. DeSantis gave Biden an out by validading the White House's message that Trump is to blame for America's current inflation woes. Prior to this, DeSantis had even used my term Bidenflation many times on Twitter, where it's become a mainstay on the right.
Let me sketch out how things are going to go from here, now that DeSantis has opened his big mouth: We already have seen DeSantis’ words used by Biden’s campaign in one ad.
The next thing that will happen is that Karine Jean-Pierre will start quoting him in White House Press Briefings in response to any and all questions about the economy, because he agreed with the White House's talking points.
Then, when the general election comes around, DeSantis’ words will be recycled ad nauseam in television ads, to the point that his snarky little comment will be drilled into the heads of swing state voters, and will cross their minds every time they get sticker shock from the price of gas. Maybe not all of them, but enough to matter at least in a close race.
Then, during the 2024 presidential debates, which Biden will otherwise barely stammer his way through, he’ll still find time at the end of the final debate to turn to the camera and repeat DeSantis’ words and remind the audience that “folks, it’s his fault we’re in this mess, not mine. A governor of his own party even said so. He spent like a drunken sailor and I’m trying to build back better.” And Trump will have to do everything in his power to make sure no one’s fool enough to believe it. Newsom will say the same thing if he ends up in the spot.
What DeSantis did, in other words, is a move straight out of pro-wrestling known as “scumbagging.” Scumbagging refers to a situation where two wrestlers are fighting, only for a third wrestler to come out of nowhere and mount a dirty surprise attack on one of the two, thus turning the fight into an unfair two on one. Except that in that situation, the scumbag wrestler usually thinks he has a shot at winning, whereas DeSantis knows full well that if he stammered out this gibberish in Trump’s presence, he’d get his entire career squished like a grape in a French vinyard.
Which, by the way, is exactly what should happen to it, now. Ron DeSantis has shown his true colors: the simp has dropped the mask. His Tier 3 subscription to the electorate—gifted to him by megadonors—is about to rightly run out, and the fact that his desperate, small, delusional attack will be spammed endlessly by concern trolls and Democrat ads, means that only one fate is appropriate for Ron DeScumbag: It’s time to drop him from the server, and send him back to his normie job—assuming he can still even do that.
