Flailing DeSantis campaign leans into anti-LGBTQ ad, tries to out-cruel Trump

I’m not one to give Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis advice, aside from, “Consider returning to the swamp from whence you came.” But I will offer one suggestion to aid his flailing GOP presidential primary campaign: Fire everyone advising you.

That probably wouldn’t be enough to help the governor defeat former President Donald Trump, the candidate riding a wave of indictments to likely victory in the former party of law and order. But it might at least ease the embarrassment DeSantis is experiencing.

Last week, the Florida governor’s campaign shared a bizarre and staggeringly homophobic online ad that criticized Trump’s past comments showing support for the LGBTQ community and called the former president “the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate” Pride Month. See, that's supposed to be an insult.

The ad then flexed DeSantis’ anti-LGBTQ muscles, celebrating with headlines about the governor signing “the most extreme slate of anti-trans laws in modern history” and a commentator noting that Florida’s laws “literally threaten trans existence.” See, that's supposed to be a compliment.

Ron DeSantis' campaign is trying to out-cruel Donald Trump

Interspersing shots of muscle-bound men with thumping club music, the ad, like DeSantis himself, was both cruel and cringingly weird, and it was swiftly panned by Democrats, Trump supporters and the conservative LGBT group Log Cabin Republicans.

So what did DeSantis do? On Wednesday, he doubled down on the ad, saying on a streaming show: “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, because he’s now campaigning saying the opposite.”

For those who aren’t fluent in “overly-online anti-woke warrior” speak that means … heck, I don’t really know what that means. What I do know is suggesting Trump is a friend to transgender people or the broader LGBTQ community is ludicrous, and anyone tossing around the term “gender ideology” needs to go to their room.

DeSantis campaign is emitting an odor of desperation

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung responded to DeSantis’ comment, telling NBC News: “A desperate DeSanctus campaign, with a flailing candidate, in its last throes of relevancy.”

GOP fearmongering campaign: Why is America not the lawless, gun-free, socialist wasteland Republicans warned us about?

It absolutely pains me to say this, but Trump’s campaign is right. DeSantis, DeSanctus or “DerpSantis,” as I like to call him, is several steps beyond desperate.

For starters, his advisers must have looked at how Trump’s brash bullying and overall cruelty worked out for Republicans in the past three national elections (a midterm, the 2020 presidential election then another midterm), and said: “Here’s the solution. We need to run to the right of this guy who keeps losing, and be more cruel!”

That’s when they all should’ve been fired.

DeSantis' campaign advisers should all be unceremoniously fired

They weren’t, so now, after sharing one of the most bizarre and offensive presidential ads in recent memory, DeSantis’ genius advisers apparently said: “Let’s lean into that ad in a way that somehow, defying all logic, makes one of the most objectively loathsome politicians on earth look slightly sympathetic while making you look like an absolute monster!”

If I didn’t know better, I’d say the DeSantis campaign is run by a bunch of Trump lackeys savoring the chance to drive it into a ditch.

Losing already? Maybe Ron DeSantis' flailing presidential campaign caught 'woke mind virus.'

Here’s a simple fact: You can’t out-mean Trump, and even if you could, independent, Democratic and even moderate Republican voters outside Florida have made it abundantly clear they aren’t interested in governing-by-bully.

Polling and election results have shown us voters have no appetite for Trumpian cruelty

According to national polling averages by FiveThirtyEight, DeSantis started the year at 37%. He’s now at 23%, and the governor saw no polling bump to speak of when he formally announced his campaign.

He’s getting trounced by a candidate who has now been charged with more than 70 felonies.

Whoever thinks DeSantis can get out of his present morass by posting alt-right-meme-filled videos touting his draconian attacks on marginalized people has been spending too much time huffing swamp fumes.

DeSantis can say 'woke' all he wants, his campaign still stinks

DeSantis is a derpy candidate, like an animatronic robot programmed to appear unfamiliar with and annoyed by the ways of humans while repeating the word “woke” every seven seconds.

But his campaign is, remarkably, even worse, with its embrace of a bizarro-world anti-LGBTQ ad a perfect case in point.

The whole mess is a tent shy of a circus. And it’s poised to make Jeb Bush’s agonizingly limp 2016 bid for the presidency look like a memorable powerhouse. (Please clap.)

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Twitter @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Desperate DeSantis campaign doubles down on homophobic anti-LGBTQ ad