Labeling GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis “DeThirsty” on Wednesday’s episode of “All In,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes spent some time mocking the DeSantis campaign’s most recent ad, which he argued likely feels kind of pathetic to anyone who watches it, even if they agree with it.
“Even those folks and the people he’s trying to appeal to,” Hayes said, “will find his campaign’s latest video to be as desperate and thirsty as the rest of us do.”
Watch the clip below now.
Under discussion was an ad DeSantis’ team released June 30 that was timed, unmistakably, as homophobic mockery of Pride month. It starts with several clips of Donald Trump expressing support for LGBTQ people, then transitions to clips and stills of the criticism DeSantis’ own anti-LGBTQ policies have provoked.
It also includes snippets of movies scenes –Christian Bale in “American Psycho,” Brad Pitt as Achilles in “Troy,” Cillian Murphy in “Peaky Blinders” and Leonardo DiCaprio in “The Wolf of Wall Street” — and stills of shirtless, muscular, oiled-up men. All paired to extremely distracting dance music and visuals. The New Republic described it as possibly “the weirdest ad in American history,” an assessment that’s hard to disagree with. Read more here.
Hayes brought that ad up in the context of DeSantis’ (so far) failing attempt to become the 2024 GOP front runner. “A big part of the reason I would submit that he has failed to gain any traction is he has chosen, whether he realizes it or not, to run this weird, alienating hard right campaign,” Hayes said. “Like a ‘Ron DeSantis doesn’t care who he offends,’ kind of thing.”
“I understand the logic here, because it really is the case that there’s an appetite for that kind of thing in the Republican base. And he thinks,” Hayes continued, “he can gain some traction in the darkest, most antisocial corners of the internet, where cruelty is a virtue. But I think even those folks, and the people he’s trying to appeal to, will find his campaign’s latest video to be as desperate and thirsty as the rest of us do.”
Hayes then played the entire ad.
“All right, there’s a lot to say here,” Hayes said, chuckling after it ended. “First, let me just say I understand, I, and probably you, are not the target audience for that video. Which again, fine. But everything about it is just so strange, and so entirely alienating.”
“I mean, yes, it’s bait for folks like me, right? ‘Oh, the liberals,’ including me in that video, ‘they don’t like Ron DeSantis, therefore, you should like him.’ But again,” Hayes said, “that’s lost underneath the crushing weight of the sheer effort of the Uber online Twitter nerds who came up with this, who cannot or will not understand how to act and interact with other people like a normal person.”
“In fact, I would go so far to say the most people are not even a target audience in this video. I mean, even most Republicans are not the target audience for this video. When you’re trying to compare yourself favorably to the serial killer from ‘American Psycho,’ you may have lost the thread a bit,” Hayes continued.
Hayes described this as the natural consequence of who DeSantis has hired for his campaign, which includes among other people someone who has publicly praised a holocaust denier. “Well, maybe this is the kind of campaign you end up running. So you’ve got a disgusting, you know, whatever homophobic offensive video released on the last day of Pride Month, because again, this is all overly determined, right? They’re trying to incite a backlash.”
“”I get that this video exists again, for that purpose. Like, we all see what you’re doing. There’s nothing subtle here. But again, even on its own terms, I think you missed the mark,” Hayes added. “My strong instinct is that even to the base, this comes across like Jeb’s (Bush), infamous ‘please clap’ moment.”
Hayes noted the recent polling that has Trump ahead of DeSantis overwhelmingly among likely primary voters, something even a guy who runs a DeSantis PAC admits.
“As long as Trump is in the race, and as long as the race centers on Trump’s worldview, DeSantis won’t be able to pass him. Again, I’m an outsider looking in here and I will be the first to admit that, and I will be the first to admit that you don’t necessarily go to Chris Hayes for, like, the most obvious insight into the thinking of the median Republican primary voter,” Hayes said.
“But, again, my two cents, if you want to beat Donald Trump in the Republican primary, here’s what I think is obvious: You need to kind of comfort his voters and keep them in your fold. Right? You cannot be seen as anti-Trump. I totally get that that’s true,” Hayes added.
“But then you got to convince them you’re a better and more electable alternative, and then add them to the people who were not that interested in voting for Trump again in the primary. That’s how you add up the coalition big enough to win. You’re not going to get there by trying to convince the biggest dorks on the internet that you are even more of a callous psychopath than he is,” Hayes concluded
