A video spotlighted by the DeSantis War Room Twitter account that painted Donald Trump as accommodating on LGBTQ+ issues has been quietly deleted.
However, the Tweet highlighting the video is still up as of this writing Saturday morning.
The deletion, first noticed by Axios reporter Alex Thompson, caps off days of blowback against Ron DeSantis which included the Governor defending the video as “fair game” and saying that Trump was a “pioneer” in allowing transgender women to participate in beauty pageants that Trump put on.
“Yeah look, I think 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,” DeSantis said on an episode of Tomi Lahren is Fearless on Outkick.
The Florida Governor and 2024 presidential candidate contends that Trump changed his position on the inclusion of transgender people into public life.
“He’s now campaigning, saying the opposite, that he doesn’t think that you should have men competing in women’s things like athletics,” he continued.
The video shared by the DeSantis War Room Twitter account included various edgelord-style memes and motifs, including favorable representations of Christian Bale performing as the serial killer Patrick Bateman in the film “American Psycho” and Brad Pitt playing Achilles in “Troy.” The spot also uses the Giga Chad meme, black-and-white photos of muscular bodybuilders, popular among right-wing social media influencers.
Meanwhile, at least one group of artists whose images were appropriated by the ad objected.
The “Peaky Blinders” crew issued a statement repudiating the ad’s unauthorized usage of the Tommy Shelby character, saying they “do not support nor endorse the video’s narrative and strongly disapprove of the use of the content in this manner.”
The video was condemned by Democrats and Republicans alike while it was up.
“I’m going to leave aside the strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled-up shirtless bodybuilders,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNN’s State of the Union.
“I used to think he was a great governor,” Rep. George Santos told The Hill. “Now, I’m starting to think differently.”
“DeSantis has hit a new low. But he’s so desperate he’ll do anything to get ahead – that’s been the theme of his campaign. You can’t win a general, let alone 2028 by going after people that are integral parts of the conservative movement,” remarked Caitlyn Jenner.
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