The Entire Internet Comes Together to Drag Pathetic Ron DeSantis

You have to hand it to Ron DeSantis: the man successfully brought a divided country together. Just not in the way he wanted.

The Florida governor on Sunday ended his presidential campaign, a run that was arguably more embarrassing to watch than for him to actually do it. But what should have been a serious and bittersweet moment was instead ruined by a now-classic DeSantis goof.

“We don’t have a clear path to victory,” DeSantis said in a video message, which he accompanied with the caption, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

DeSantis attributed the quotation to Winston Churchill, but in a perfect encapsulation of what a disaster his campaign was, social media users were quick to correct him. “The quoted words in this tweet do not appear in this phrasing in any of Winston Churchill’s books, articles, speeches and papers,” a community note on X (formerly Twitter) read. “They do appear in a Budweiser print ad from 1938.”

The note was later removed for unknown reasons, but other X users had the receipts: The International Churchill Society stated the British prime minister never said that quotation. It didn’t take long before someone else found the exact Budweiser ad that did use that line.

It’s also ironic that DeSantis accidentally used a line from a Budweiser ad, as the beer brand came under fire last year from the exact people DeSantis was hoping to win over. People on the right claimed Budweiser had gone “woke” after it did a brief ad campaign with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney. And DeSantis was all too happy to fuel the fire against the company.

While the mistake is a terrible look for DeSantis, it feels like the perfect bookend to a campaign that has been a hot mess from start to finish. Throughout his campaign, DeSantis successfully managed to unite the United States in making fun of him. People across the political spectrum poked fun at how he allegedly ate pudding with his fingers, had apparently never seen a piece of pizza before, and didn’t know how to smile.

Right- and left-wingers delighted in the conspiracy that DeSantis wore lifts in his cowboy boots to make himself appear taller. Historically, taller presidential candidates tend to perform better. But instead of giving himself an edge, DeSantis made himself a heel.

DeSantis has also succeeded in uniting Floridians—against him. His popularity has dropped in the Sunshine State, and he may even go home to a state Republican Party that has soured on him.

So pour one out for Ron DeSantis. He’s just another Florida man now. But hey, at least that’s everyone’s favorite genre of joke!

The Baltimore Sun’s new owner isn’t quite the moral paragon he expects his businesses to be.

David Smith, the longtime chairman of Sinclair Broadcasting Group who recently scooped up the Sun in an undisclosed nine-figure deal, has lived a salacious private life at odds with his conservative media empire.

In August 1996, the Sun reported that Smith was caught by police in an undercover sting while receiving oral sex from a sex worker in a company-owned Mercedes. The Baltimore-based businessman was then detained overnight in the city’s Central Booking Center.

According to the paper, police said the sex worker broke off conversation with an undercover police officer when she saw “her regular date driving in the area.” She then ran over to a 1992 Mercedes, registered to Sinclair, and got in on the passenger side.

But that was just the one time Smith “got caught,” according to one unidentified friend of the media mogul who spoke with GQ in 2005.

“He’s a whoremonger. A real whoremonger,” the friend told the magazine. “He loves the titty bars. The only people he likes go to the titty bars with him. Those are the only people he trusts. He also goes out to Vegas all the time. He goes to the high-end titty bars. He’s always getting the private upstairs rooms, champagne, the works.”

At the time of the interview, Smith would have been in his mid-fifties.

While the Sun will not technically be included in the Sinclair media empire, it has already been warned that it will be expected to more closely resemble the politics of the Sinclair-owned local Fox station, which Smith spoke glowingly of during a contentious two-hour meet and greet with staff on Tuesday.

In the same meeting, Smith dropped that he had read the daily paper—which has been a staple in the Baltimore market since its inception in 1837—just four times.

Other upcoming changes on the menu include expecting Sun staff to conduct unscientific online polls on a daily basis, similar to the multimillionaire’s TV empire, per The Baltimore Banner.

Over the last several decades, Sinclair has become known for issuing unfounded scripts and segments from the top down to hundreds of its affiliates, resulting in toxic, Big Brother gibberish, per The New Republic’s Michael Tomasky.

Representatives for Sinclair did not respond to a request for comment prior to publishing. Nearly two decades ago, when the allegations were initially produced, David Smith and Sinclair’s executives and attorneys declined dozens of opportunities to comment when contacted by telephone, email, and when a reporter visited their office, according to GQ.

Growing numbers of Democratic lawmakers are openly pushing back on America’s ongoing blanket support for Israel in light of recent comments by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu sparked massive criticism after he declared Thursday that Israel intended to control all of the land in the region, instead of the two-state solution widely backed by the international community. He promised that there would never be a Palestinian state. Instead, Israel would control all territory west of the Jordan River.

The response from Democrats was immediate. On Friday, Representative Pramila Jayapal said Netanyahu’s comments “should cause us to reset our relationship of unconditional support to [his] government.”

“These are policies that are diametrically opposed to the U.S.’s stated goals,” the chair of the influential Congressional Progressive Caucus said in a video.

Also on Friday, a group of 15 Jewish Democratic representatives released a statement that succinctly rejected Netanyahu’s comments. “We strongly disagree with the Prime Minister,” the lawmakers said. “A two-state solution is the path forward.”

One of the signatories was the most senior Jewish member of Congress, Representative Jerry Nadler, who has previously slammed his Republican colleagues for using antisemitism as a political tool while in reality doing nothing to “genuinely counter” anti-Jewish hate.

Meanwhile, in the Senate, more Democrats have signed on as co-sponsors of Senator Chris Van Hollen’s move to condition U.S. foreign aid on human rights. While the move would apply to all countries, it is a clear signal to Israel.

“I think people are at the end of their ropes with the Netanyahu coalition … which includes pretty right-wing extremists,” Van Hollen told Politico. “It’s pretty clear that Netanyahu is listening much more to the extremists in his government than the president of the United States and the Biden administration.”

Van Hollen stressed that Biden needs to give up his “quiet diplomacy” and “mixed signals” approach toward Israel.

To Netanyahu’s credit, he does support a two-state solution—so long as the second state is on a completely different continent. Netanyahu’s far-right coalition has reportedly been secretly speaking with the Democratic Republic of Congo about resettling thousands of Palestinians in the African nation.

On Thursday, a group of 60 House Democrats sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging him to explicitly state that the United States opposes the forced expulsion of Palestinians out of Gaza (otherwise known as ethnic cleansing).

“We have serious concerns both about extremist rhetoric from some Israeli officials and about proposals being floated by some in the Israeli government for the transfer of Palestinian civilians out of Gaza,” the letter said.

“The United States must remain committed, as you have stated on many occasions, to a future in which all Israelis and Palestinians live in peace with equal rights, dignity, and freedom.”

House Democrats are also reportedly going to call for the resignation of White House Middle East adviser Brett McGurk, a controversial figure that many critics see as the mastermind behind policies that allow for ongoing bloodshed in Gaza.

Israel’s attack on Gaza has killed more than 24,000 people since October. Israel receives $3.8 billion in security assistance from the U.S. every year.

Donald Trump’s classless pastime of bragging about his money may get him into even deeper legal trouble.

In a video deposition made public Friday by the New York Attorney General’s Office, the 2024 presidential candidate claimed that he only became president the first time because of the “brand,” and that, according to him, he should have tacked even more onto his bank statements—statements that New York courts have already deemed overinflated and fraudulent.

“If I wanted to show you a good statement, I would have added maybe $10 billion or something for the brand,” Trump said. “I mean I became president because of the brand, OK. I became president. I think it’s the hottest brand in the world.”

Legal experts predict this could affect how much Trump will be expected to fork over to columnist E. Jean Carroll, whom a jury has already decided Trump is liable for sexually assaulting and defaming. Carroll is requesting damages of at least $10 million.

“This jury is allowed to consider how much Donald Trump is worth,” explained legal analyst Lisa Rubin on MSNBC. “Because if you’re trying to punish someone if they only have $10 in their pocket, that’s very different than punishing someone who has hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in their pocket.”

“So, if I’m Robby Kaplan and her team representing E. Jean Carroll right now, I’m poring over this video and thinking about how to use it if Donald Trump, indeed, takes the stand on Monday,” she added.

Trump is on the line in four criminal trials and two civil trials. The videotaped deposition, which includes a 479-page written transcript, stems from his $370 million bank fraud trial in New York in which Trump and his sons stand accused of deceiving banks and insurers by massively overvaluing the elder Trump’s net worth.

But that wasn’t the only outsized claim the GOP front-runner made in his testimony. Elsewhere in the deposition, Trump patted himself on the back for allegedly standing in the way of nuclear holocaust.

“I think you would have nuclear holocaust if I didn’t deal with North Korea,” Trump argued. “I think you would have a nuclear war if I weren’t elected. And I think you might have a nuclear war now, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said during the April 13, 2023, deposition after he was asked if he was too busy to run his company while he was in the White House.

Representative Paul Gosar is livid that fewer white people are joining the military, a shift he blames on “‘woke’ ideologies.”

The far-right Arizona congressman sent out a fundraising email Thursday night with the subject line “dismantling woke marxist ideologies.”

“The number of white recruits has plummeted,” Gosar wrote in the email, first reported on by Vice News. “[It’s] a casualty of this cultural skirmish that has left our Army beleaguered and besieged by ‘woke’ ideologies.”

“This is not merely a crisis of numbers,” he said. “It is a crisis of spirit.”

Gosar was reacting to a study released last week by Military.com that found the number of white recruits in the U.S. army has dropped significantly in the past five years. In 2018, white people made up 56.4 percent of new recruits. But they made up just 44 percent in 2023.

The number of Black and Hispanic recruits has stayed about the same, but they make up a larger percentage of the recruiting pool because the lower number of white recruits has decreased the overall recruiting total.

Military.com was unable to pinpoint a single reason for the drop in white recruits but said factors could include increased scrutiny of military service, an underfunded public education system, and issues in public health. Others have suggested that another reason could be the fact that young white Americans make up about three-quarters of the tens of thousands of annual fatal opioid overdoses.

The military has also upped efforts to increase diversity, particularly LGBTQ people, as well as to root out extremism from its ranks. But Gosar and other right-wingers complaining about the drop in white recruits in the army shouldn’t worry too much: The vast majority of the military is still white.

Nonetheless, Gosar claimed the lower white recruitment numbers are more proof that conservatives are fighting a “pivotal battle for the soul of our nation”—a phrase that stings of white nationalism (to which Gosar has ties) and echoes Donald Trump’s recent claim that immigrants are “destroying the blood of our country.” Gosar is a staunch Trump supporter.

Many Republicans have increasingly accused the military of going “woke” and have tried to pass legislation limiting expressions of pride in diversity. In November, Senator Tommy Tuberville said the military was the “weakest” it’s ever been because of “wokeness.”

Ironically, at the time, Tuberville was carrying out a one-man blockade on military promotions to protest the Department of Defense’s policy of reimbursing costs for service members who had to travel for an abortion. Despite repeated warnings from military leadership that he was hurting military readiness, Tuberville persisted with his stunt for a total of nine months.