In Europe, homophobic and anti-LGBTI rights political positions are often masked or disguised – perhaps less so – if only to circumvent anti-hate laws. In the United States, they are one step ahead, and homophobic politicians are beginning to stand up for their intolerance.
The main rival of Donald Trump towards the Republican primaries for the presidential elections of 2024; the governor of Florida and promoter of the most extreme laws and measures against trans youth or education about gender and racism, as well as against abortion and immigrants, Ron DeSantis, has just wrapped the trocha once again in this ground with the dissemination of a campaign video proclaiming “the true wolf” against the LGTBI community.
The spot, published on Twitter, begins with attacks on Trump for trying to protect these people, as if it were a gross sin. The accusation is, moreover, basically false, with the exceptions of some past gestures of the former president that he himself has rectified time and time again with his attacks on gays, lesbians and especially trans people.
The video specifically rescues images of Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention, when he assured that he would “do everything in his power to protect our LGBTI citizens.” At the time, in the midst of campaigning for that year’s election, the former president promised protection against attacks like the one that had taken place weeks earlier at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where a terrorist killed 49 people in what at the time it was the deadliest shooting in the country’s history.
DeSantis now reproaches the leader for both the verbal promises of protection to gays and the fact that at the same time he distributed T-shirts with the inscription “LGBTQ for Trump”, among other gestures of approach to the mentioned community by the former president.
Everyone in the US knows to what extent the former president drifted towards a retrograde discourse, particularly when it comes to gender transition operations and trans athletes. For the adversary, however, his compassionate past is a stain worth highlighting.
After the rant against soft Trump, the controversial propaganda ad features a DeSantis who doesn’t care what people say about his laws and actions against the group in question. And it alternates images of the governor himself, one of them with rays coming out of his eyes, with headlines of when he “signed the most extreme list of anti-trans laws in modern history” or enacted a “draconian anti-trans bathroom bill “.
The photos of the protagonist are then combined with a surprising association, with those of alpha males as diverse as the killer of American Psycho played by Christian Bale; Brad Pitt’s version of Achilles in Troy, and by the Wolf of Wall Street played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Then, a sign alludes to the arrival of a “real wolf,” immediately represented by a meme of DeSantis with fangs.
The so-called “quick response account” of the DeSantis campaign uploaded the video to Twitter with the following text criticizing LGBTI celebrations and Trump: “To conclude ‘Pride Month,’ we hear from the politician who do more than any other Republican to celebrate.”
The video prompted pushback from prominent right-wing moderates, including those at the Log Cabin, which bills itself as the “largest Republican organization in the country dedicated to representing LGBT conservatives.”
“DeSantis’ message is divisive and desperate. Republicans and other common-sense conservatives know that he has left out younger voters and voters from undecided states,” officials at the Log Cabin told them. And they added: “DeSantis’ naïve policy positions are dangerous and politically stupid.”
The spokesman for Trump’s electoral team, Steven Cheung, responded that the video is part of “a desperate campaign by DeSanctus (sic), with a candidate in the lurch”.
Fellow Republican Richard Grenell, Trump’s former director of national intelligence and the first openly gay presidential cabinet member, called the spot “homophobic, without a doubt homophobic.”
DeSantis defended the video as a tool to unmask the former president as a “true pioneer” in the task, according to the far left, of “injecting gender ideology” into Republican discourse.
