The DeSantis Campaign Made That Homophobic Video After All: Report

The presidential campaign of Florida’s Republican governor, who has found himself in the middle of a culture war that he started, created the video that got a lot of attention for all the wrong reasons recently and tried to pass it off as independently made.

A Ron DeSantis campaign staffer produced the anti-LGBTQ+ video targeting former President Donald Trump and passed it off to a supporter for release, according to The New York Times.

“To wrap up ‘Pride Month,’ let’s hear from the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate it," DeSantis War Room tweeted June 30, alongside a video that would be derided nearly universally as strange and homophobic yet simultaneously homoerotic.

The spot criticized Trump for expressing his support for the LGBTQ+ community in the wake of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando and included clips of shirtless muscular men.

The video appeared on Twitter and looked to to be retweeted and commented upon by the official DeSantis campaign account but appeared to originate from another account:

After the video was posted and received negative backlash, the account owner deleted it.

Nonetheless, according to an investigation into the DeSantis campaign “reboot,” the retweet was a sham to conceal the campaign’s creation of the video.

“A DeSantis campaign aide had originally produced the video internally, passing it off to an outside supporter to post it first and making it appear as if it was generated independently, according to a person with knowledge of the incident,” the Times reports.

DeSantis’s campaign did not comment on the issues of spending, travel, or the video in question.

As a result of missteps and soaring campaign costs, donors and supporters have expressed concern about the campaign.