Pro-DeSantis PAC rolls out ad touting military service

Never Back Down, a super PAC supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), released a new ad Monday highlighting the governor’s experience in the Navy.

The ad, which is part of a seven-figure broadcast and digital ad buy airing in Iowa and New Hampshire, was first seen by The Hill.

The 30-second spot titled “Oath” notes DeSantis’s decision to volunteer to go to Iraq with the Navy after graduating from Yale and Harvard Law. The ad also highlights that DeSantis earned a Bronze Star as a lieutenant and assisted Navy SEALs.

“Service to country is Ron DeSantis’ story. That’s the American story,” the ad’s narrator says.

The super PAC’s ad comes less than a week after the DeSantis campaign also released an ad highlighting his military service. The Florida governor has spoken frequently about his experience in the Navy on the presidential campaign trail. If elected president, DeSantis would be the first president since George H. W. Bush to have served in a combat zone.

Last month, DeSantis unveiled his plan to revamp the country’s military, marking his second major policy rollout of the presidential campaign. The plan, titled “Mission First,” features four pillars: “Ripping Political Agendas Out of Our Military;” “Restoring Military Standards;” “Breaking the Swamp and Promoting Accountability;” and “Turning the Tide Against Biden’s Military Recruitment Crisis.”

The plan takes aim at diversity, equity and inclusion administrators, as well as policies impacting transgender service members.

“It’s a military that has been ordered by civilian officials to pursue political ideology, to pursue social experimentation, to be yet another institution in American life that gets infected with the woke mind virus,” DeSantis said at a campaign event in South Carolina. “This is changing the character of the military, it’s changing the culture of our services, and it’s creating a situation in which great warriors have been driven away and recruiting is at an all-time low.”

DeSantis’s campaign is in reset mode in a bid to gain more traction in the polls against former President Trump. Last week, the campaign announced it would be switching campaign managers, which followed news of two rounds of staff layoffs.

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