About that pudding ad

Created
Wed, 19/04/2023 - 07:30
Updated
Wed, 19/04/2023 - 07:30
Dan Pfeiffer (subscription) explains why MAGA’s usual childishness is actually quite savvy in this case: One of the Super Pacs allied with Donald Trump released a video on Friday morning that took the Internet by storm. The ad uses the potentially apocryphal story of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis eating chocolate pudding with his fingers to attack his past support for cutting Social Security and Medicare. Most Trump World shenanigans are stupid, bordering on self-destructive. That is not the case with this ad, which ran on CNN and Fox News on Friday morning. On the day after DeSantis signed a dangerous six-week abortion ban, it seems trite to care about the manner in which he consumes packaged desserts. While impulse control is a valuable attribute in a Commander-in-Chief who can unilaterally launch nuclear warheads, no one should really care that DeSantis was unwilling to wait for a spoon. Frankly, his pudding impatience may be the most relatable thing about the otherwise painfully awkward, malfunctioning Westworld robot authoritarian. But bear with me; there is ample precedent to suggest the pudding thing could hurt DeSantis’s yet-to-launch presidential campaign. I don’t want to overstate the case. This is a long campaign and one ad or one anecdote won’t dramatically alter the trajectory. This ad isn’t even that great. Still, the pudding anecdote and how the Trump folks are weaponizing it is a case study of how presidential politics works in our broken media ecosystem. People Don’t Vote for Weirdos Thanks to all the coverage his cruel stunts have received, Ron…