You can tell Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has struck more than one nerve with the far left: the hatred for him has now been extended to his wife, First Lady Casey DeSantis.
On Sunday, Katie Baker, the executive editor of the left-wing website The Daily Beast, unleashed an unhinged rant about Casey over her jacket, of all things.
The impetus was the first lady’s appearance alongside her husband at a political rally in Iowa last week. Here’s how Baker started her piece:
“The First Lady of Florida showed up on the campaign trail in Iowa this weekend wearing a ghastly black leather jacket—American flag on front, an alligator and the silhouette of her state on the back, with the sneering words, ‘Where Woke Goes to Die’—that brought to mind nothing so much as the racks of a Red State big-bin store where it would be retailing for $24.99.”
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“Casey DeSantis’ coat is just like her husband Ron DeSantis’ campaign: Crude. Grasping. Saying the ugly part out loud. Whereas [former President Donald] Trump would wink-wink at the fascists—who can forget his dog whistle to the “very fine people on both sides” at Charlottesville—DeSantis wants to peel off Trump’s base by being even more explicit about who he intends to target. You can see it right there on his wife’s jacket: DeSantis’ Florida is where the woke go to die—and a lot of other people die as well.”
Notice it’s now “the woke,” implying people, instead of just wokeism itself.
Baker then goes on to broaden the smear by promoting the left’s usual lies.
“Florida under DeSantis has had one of the highest COVID death rates in the nation, even as he’s exulted in his anti-mask policies. And as the governor whips up anti-LGBT sentiment and bans books on race, Casey’s jacket and its message of death also bring to mind the horrific Pulse nightclub mass shooting in Orlando, not to mention the state’s shameful history of Jim Crow-era lynch mobs and the Rosewood massacre. But of course, DeSantis and his cronies want to prevent kids from learning about any of that by censoring their library books and AP curricula,” she wrote.
“The jacket, then, is a warning: Watch out, America.”
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Set aside the misleading rant about COVID, leaving out that Florida has by far America’s biggest population of those most vulnerable to COVID, the elderly, or that the Pulse shooting was carried out by a radicalized Muslim extremist, or that Florida state law mandates the teaching of black history.
The asinine part is the “warning” all comes from … a jacket.
Nonetheless, that was where it all started. As Baker continued,
“It’s hard to say one is reading too much into a coat that’s so explicit,” she added. “But while Casey may be trying to position herself after Jackie Kennedy (good luck) and even Melania [Trump], if this weekend is any indication, she’s falling far short. It doesn’t matter how many times she wears that ice-blue Badgley Mischka cape-dress. The DeSantis’ will never be Camelot.”
“Jackie and JFK [President John F. Kennedy] symbolized the opposite of vulgar pettiness—they embodied youth, energy, a commitment to moral progress in the struggle for Civil Rights, a country fresh with idealism. Not an America that was obsessed with banning books about male seahorses and rainbows, or nuking the latest Disney movie.”
Of course, in JFK’s day, Disney didn’t offer gay characters in its movies or support teaching kindergartners that men can have babies and women have penises, so we don’t know what he would have thought of that.
“As they appear on the campaign trail,” Baker’s screed continued, “we are seeing clues to who the DeSantis’ are at heart. We’ve got a Sunshine State Lady Macbeth, in her green cape and white gloves, with her middling husband and her thirst for the crown—and we’ve got a guy who wants to be sitting in a corner, mumbling about the Federalist Papers and gobbling pudding off his fingers.”
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“Trump would never eat pudding with anything other than a gold spoon—while pressing the button for his 20th Diet Coke of the day and trying to bomb Iran on a whim. Put another way, Trump is the danger of raw, chaotic id. DeSantis, meanwhile, is the little jerk who’s going to make all of us pay for how he had no friends in third grade, or whatever his particular villain origin story is.”
“Of course, neither Melania Trump nor Casey DeSantis could ever embody the class and effortless elegance of Michelle Obama or Dr. Jill Biden. Those First Ladies have used fashion not as a punitive tool to stick it to political enemies—nor as a bored, nihilistic shrug—but as something generous and welcoming,” wrote.
Does that include Jill Biden’s outfit that actor James Woods once compared to a Rand-McNally map?
“So what does Casey DeSantis want us to know about her? What does she stand for? Well, we know she’s a woman who has high ambitions for her awkward husband. We know she’s a woman who understands the power of the image. We know she’s a woman who has overcome the great trials of a breast cancer diagnosis. Anyone going through that must have strength and grit. Still, we’ve all met people who have stared death in the face and came out the other side incandescently glowing with life and with love,” added.
Baker then shares what Casey’s jacket tells her:
“Perhaps that is the case in Casey DeSantis’ private and personal life, but on the public stage, with that black leather jacket, she’s telling us she stands for something else. She’s telling us she is cheering on a spouse who gets his kicks off targeting his fellow Americans. She’s telling us she’s down with his message of division and dehumanization. She’s telling us they are ready for far more power. She’s incandescent in her black leather jacket, at her husband’s side—both of them seething with hate.”
Yes, let’s accuse DeSantis of that, while the current occupant of the White House calls his opponents every vile name in the book and sends the FBI out to round them up for a stay in the gulag because they want to protect children or reject mandatory COVID shots and national DEI seminars.
By the way, Baker’s hit piece was filed under her website’s Fashion section.
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