Team DeSantis denounces New York Times’ claim it lost the ‘meme wars’

Top staffers with the Ron DeSantis presidential campaign are responding to a critical article from Saturday’s New York Times.

The Times article, entitled “How DeSantis’ hyper-online 2024 campaign strategy fell flat,” dissected the DeSantis strategy of courting online right-wing “influencers,” being “thin-skinned and meanspirited online,” circulating “videos employing a Nazi symbol and homoerotic images,” and generally being “unable to halt the cascade of internet memes that belittle and ridicule Mr. DeSantis.”

“The corporate media loves that Trump prioritizes winning meme wars over defeating the Left. Because they know that next time BLM decides to burn down our cities, Trump will just tweet LAW & ORDER a dozen times like he did before, thinking the internet is real life,” wrote Christina Pushaw, the former official spokesperson for the DeSantis administration who has since moved over to the campaign side.

The Times specifically name-checked Pushaw, but she didn’t respond to those personal attacks.

The article described the California transplant as “well known for her extremely online approach to communications, including a scorched-earth strategy when it comes to critics and the press. As the governor’s press secretary, she frequently posted screenshots of queries from mainstream news outlets on the web rather than responding to them and once told followers to “drag” — parlance for a prolonged public shaming — an Associated Press reporter, which got her temporarily banned from Twitter.”

Yet, in contrast to Pushaw’s pushback against lower-profile critics in the state of Florida, aided and abetted by the Governor’s use of the bully pulpit, the Times depicted Pushaw and the rest of the comms team as feckless and flat-footed in response to provocations from Trump world. The article notes, correctly, that DeSantis’ adjuncts “conspicuously avoided so much as mentioning Mr. Trump, and appeared completely caught off guard when, in March, pro-Trump influencers peppered the internet with posts that amplified a rumor that Mr. DeSantis had once eaten chocolate pudding with his fingers.”

Despite the best efforts of the DeSantis operation to enlist prominent online conservatives, the Times notes that some resisted: “Benny Johnson, a former journalist with nearly two million followers on X, Twitter’s new name, resisted overtures from the DeSantis team, remaining a vocal Trump supporter. Chaya Raichik, whose Libs of TikTok account has 2.6 million followers, was at the Tallahassee dinner, according to two attendees, but has remained neutral.”

In addition to allegedly artless outreach to influencers, the Times article notes that those who are on DeSantis’ side at least occasionally traffic in stale, canned talking points.

“The existing network of DeSantis influencers has presented challenges for the campaign. Online surrogates for Mr. DeSantis have repeatedly parroted, word for word, the talking points emailed to them each day by the campaign, undermining the effort to project an image of widespread — and organic — support. Last month, for example, three different accounts almost simultaneously posted about Mr. Trump getting booed at a college football game in Iowa.”

While the campaign apparently has a greater level of oversight over its messaging now, that doesn’t mean they aren’t responding to these attacks as if they hurt, as a post from official spokesperson Carly Atchison, who moved over to Team DeSantis from the office of Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, makes clear.

Team Trump 🤝🏼 Corporate Media https://t.co/o7LTh8l7mC

— Carly Atchison (@CarlyAtch) October 21, 2023

Meanwhile, Team Trump is gloating.

“The DeSantis War Room thought they could wage war against us. They ended up being on a kamikaze mission to tank the candidacy of Ron DeSanctimonious. A new report details how the DeSanctus hype train has crashed and burned never seen before in politics.”

“The only person to blame for this unmitigated disaster falls on one person—Ron. He empowered political school children, who were more interested in posting on X and boosting their own social media profiles, to run his campaign. This is what happens when you surround yourself with grifters and those who don’t believe in the cause,” claimed spox Steven Cheung.