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You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / 2024 Primaries / Interesting Read: Casey DeSantis, Master Mistress of DeSaster

Interesting Read: Casey DeSantis, Master Mistress of DeSaster

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The Jackie O and Melania comparisons have been obvious, but the vibe I’m getting from the DeSantis marriage — which this article highlighted — is Ronnie & Nancy Reagan. The Reagans shared a history of severe childhood trauma, which bound them into a mutually unstoppable political force within the GOP at that particular point in time. Don’t know the explanation behind the Ron & Casey ‘juggernaut’, but the comparison is scary enough. Washington Post (unpaywalled) gift link:

… Casey DeSantis was on the other side of the room. She knew, starting with his early days in politics, when Ron was still a member of Congress, elected at the age of 34, how she wanted to figure in his world. She knew the staff he should hire, former aides said, the invitations he should accept and the invitations he should decline. She knew his walking path at events, the people he’d stand next to on a stage. She knew his schedule, down to every meeting and call and fundraiser and congressional vote, because she asked to be copied on every calendar entry. She knew the cowboy boots he should wear, even though, at first, he complained that they hurt his feet, until a staffer suggested he buy dress shoes instead, at which point he said, “Casey got them for me,” and that was the end of the conversation about the cowboy boots. She knew the earpiece he should use for live interviews, because she had spent 15 years in television, even though, at first, the earpiece was uncomfortable in his ear, at which point an aide said, “Casey got this for you,” and that was the end of the conversation about the earpiece.

Ron was always talking about the two of them as one — when “we” got elected, when “we” protect freedom, when “we” fight the woke agenda — as if it was hard to see his role and hers in clear relief. Reporters approached Casey’s story with phrases like “co-governor,” “secret weapon,” “not-so-secret weapon” — the “X-factor” who “knows what’s best for Ron.” Ron was known to inspire fear, even in his allies. “If you can’t make ’em see the light,” he has said, quoting Ronald Reagan, “make ’em feel the heat.” But Casey — she was a subject they wouldn’t touch if they didn’t have to.

She stood, as many political spouses do, whether they wish to or not, as a mirror onto which the public could project its doubt and its criticism: Where Ron was hard and bellicose, people said, Casey was soft. Where he was unable to connect with voters, she was charming, telegenic, warm to the touch. Where he broke his stage presence — with an angry outburst, or a wild, sarcastic look in his eyes — she was steady in front of an audience. As a young TV anchor, she would stand in front of her bathroom mirror, practicing, practicing, practicing. Before debates during his campaign for governor in 2018, he was instructed to write “LIKABLE” in all-caps across the top of his notepad, according to footage published by ABC News, like a reminder…

Where was Casey? In 2011, she was in the back of small Republican gatherings, handing out copies of the book her husband had paid to publish, “Dreams From Our Founding Fathers,” a treatise on constitutional conservatism that mocked Barack Obama’s best-selling memoir. In 2012, she was working one TV show in Jacksonville, and planning to launch another, while spending her weekends knocking on doors for her husband’s first congressional campaign. In 2013, she was packing up their house in Sawgrass, a gated club in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., to move to his new congressional district, making her commute to work an hour and seven minutes each way. In 2016, she was home with a newborn while he spent weekdays in Washington. In 2018, she was leaving TV altogether to help him run for governor. And then she was packing boxes again, this time to move to 700 N. Adams Street, the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee. She deactivated her cellphone number and didn’t give out the new one widely. She had always been exceptionally private. But there were friends and colleagues and people she mentored who didn’t hear from her again. “You’re chasing a ghost,” one said…

To try to define the relationship between politician and spouse is to muddle around in a marriage that only two people really know. But over the years, the practice has yielded a tradition of bad, gendered clichés, in which fear and suspicion glimmer just below the surface. There is fear of crossing the person closest to the politician — in this case, his wife. There is fear of a woman exerting control where, traditionally, she should not — fear of hidden influence, communicated in intimate spaces, behind closed doors, in darkened SUVs. People have ideas about what a first lady should be. There is a collective, tacit sense that when she oversteps her role, in what she does or says or wears, we will know it when we see it, even though the role itself has never been well defined or sufficiently updated. People feared Barbara Bush, whose image as “America’s grandmother” cloaked a caustic wit and opprobrium. People feared Nancy Reagan as the calculating secret power in the White House. People feared Hillary Clinton for making no secret of her power…

Fear was always going to follow Casey, in part because so many people are scared of Ron, many around him acknowledge. He wields fear like a currency in Tallahassee. The city is small. In the late spring, when the undergraduates are leaving and the state legislature is in session, the streets are humid and empty, and the city tenses with unseen activity — lobbyists and legislators navigating the force of the man in the governor’s office.

When a group of state lawmakers pledging to support DeSantis for president received invitations to the governor’s mansion last month, they refused to talk about the gathering with anyone who hadn’t been there, treating it like a state secret, according to two people familiar with the meeting who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution. Of the 113 Republicans in the legislature, 100 are backing DeSantis for president. Twelve have stayed out of the race. Just one, state Sen. Joe Gruters, has been willing to publicly support Donald Trump. In Tallahassee, if you cross the governor, you aren’t just shown the door — you leave with the belief that he and his enforcers will try to harm your career. “People are terrified of them,” said a former Republican state House member. “These guys are not normal politicos. There’s no inner circle, because they just chop off heads and move on so quickly.”…

And he has done it with the language of zero tolerance. Listen to him talk onstage: The pandemic was a “Faucian dystopia.” Woke ideology is a “mind virus.” Parents are seeing gender identity issues “shoved down their throats.” The governor’s office would “wield 100 percent of executive power.” It would “spit nails” for its mission. If a member of the team wasn’t on board, that person would be eliminated: “Pack your bags right now — you’re gone,” he’s explained to crowds. No “leaks,” “no drama,” no “palace intrigue.” Other Republicans, they were like “potted plants,” DeSantis says. They didn’t do anything. Whatever “S.O.B.” succeeds him as governor would have nothing left to accomplish. “I’m getting all the meat off the bone.”

Ron and Casey live as an inner circle of two. They were always two private people, trusting of each other, often exclusively so, but the level of prominence and power they achieved in Tallahassee seemed to insulate their world further, creating a level of distance between Ron and Casey and everyone else. They don’t take social calls to the mansion, except for Christmas receptions and Easter egg rolls and the like. DeSantis’s supporters say this is a good thing, to be so focused on “the mission” at work and on their family at home. They say Ron and Casey are normal people in abnormal positions. Normal people go to Chick-fil-A, they say, just like Ron and Casey do. Normal people play T-ball with their kids, just like Ron and Casey do. At the residence, invited guests post Instagram photos standing next to a sign that reads “Governor’s Mansion: Closed to Visiting.” Outside, new layers of security fencing have been added to the perimeter…

By the time Ron was elected governor, aides could see that Casey would not be a typical first lady.

As Thanksgiving approached ahead of the inauguration, staffers planned for Ron and Casey to spend the day before the holiday at Trinity Rescue Mission, a homeless shelter in Jacksonville. The couple helped prep and stuff turkeys in the kitchen. Afterward, an aide suggested that Casey sit down with children at the shelter to read a book, a soft-focus event they might have arranged for Florida’s departing first lady, Ann Scott. The aide, who recounted the visit, said that after it ended, “it was made clear to everyone present that she didn’t want to do what Ann or other first ladies had previously done.”

Instead, Casey began taking daily, in-depth meetings at the Republican Party of Florida offices. Aides watched her drink cup after cup of Bulletproof Coffee. As she was preparing for her new role, she asked an aide what Melania Trump would do or wear, what stores and designers she liked, looking to the president’s wife as a model.

When it came time to plan the seating chart for the inauguration ceremony, including the reserved “Friends and Family” section, Casey provided a list of just eight names, according to a copy of the seating chart…

Much, much more at the link — read the whole thing!

Lighter, less hair-raising articles:

Reader Interactions

130Comments

  3. 3.

    WaterGirl

    I couldn’t bring myself to read it.  Can the worst of it be summarized in 25 words or less?  Is it anything like either of these?

    Oh my god, it’s worse than we thought!

    These people are scarier than previously imagined.

  5. 5.

    different-church-lady

    @WaterGirl:

    Can the worst of it be summarized in 25 words or less?

    It’s very Manchurian Candidate, without the Chinese Communist angle.

  6. 6.

    Alison Rose

    I don’t need to know anything about this woman other than the fact that she apparently enjoys, or at least can tolerate, having sex with Ron DeSantis.

    I’d rather fuck a cactus.

  7. 7.

    Brachiator

    First Ladies should be abolished. I don’t care about presidential spouses, not even those I respect, like Mrs Biden or Mrs Obama.

    If you need a Protocol and Party Person, hire somebody for the job.

    I could guess that whoever married DeSantis would either be a total nothing or the Queen of Evil. But I am not going to read about her. She is or should be unimportant.

  9. 9.

    Betsy

    Oh look!! The candidate’s wife is going to “show us his softer side.”

    She’s going to “humanize him for the voters”!

    She’s his .. wait for it .. “SECRET WEAPON”

  10. 10.

    Warblewarble

    Let me sum her up for you. Casey Desantis is an evil , scheming manipulative b****h.

  16. 16.

    Baud

    @satby:

    Except the last one got in his bad side and disappeared from public life, IIRC

     
    Exactly. Much better than having to go through a divorce.

  18. 18.

    Another Scott

    @Brachiator: +1

    The candidate is the one elected – not the spouse.

    But, on the other hand, if the candidate cannot do anything without the spouse deciding for them, then voters should know about it before casting their votes.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  19. 19.

    cliosfanboy

    I still can’t wrap my head around someone meeting DeSantis and thinking he was romantically desirable, let alone fuckable.

  20. 20.

    Scout211

    Ugh. Casey DeSantis looks and acts so fake, like her husband. They need some acting lessons if they want to portray themselves as real people.

    As for good reads, I like this one much better. For some reason, it’s not paywalled right now, but I will excerpt some excellent words for you in case you run into that dreaded paywall.

    The First Lady of Florida showed up on the campaign trail in Iowa this weekend wearing a ghastly black leather jacket—American flag on the 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.

    To be fair, Casey DeSantis wore the bomber to a charity biker rally and I’m sure the campaign intended it to be a viral moment, like Melania Trump’s infamous “I Really Don’t Care” coat that the former First Lady donned to check out the border crisis.

    . . .

    By contrast, Casey DeSantis’ coat is just like her husband Ron DeSantis’ campaign: Crude. Grasping. Saying the ugly part out loud. Whereas 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.

    . . .

    Ron and Casey will also never be the Trumps. For one thing, the Trumps have all that wealth to retreat into, not bothering themselves with the lives they wrecked along the way. Like Tom and Daisy Buchanan, just over in West Egg, not East Egg. For another, Trump manages to command attention naturally, whereas the governor’s attempts to make headlines always feel forced. Whereas Donald Trump is terrifyingly, inexorably himself, the DeSantis’ are more like poseurs. Fake Birkins. Mar-a-Lago imitators. They rail against the elites but Ron went to Harvard. They wear black leather jackets to a biker rally—regular folks!—but they really prefer to be mingling with Elon’s tech bros and wearing those designer duds. They want it way too much and it shows. Why else would Ron whine so bitterly about his wife being jilted by Vogue?

     

    Still, as they appear on the campaign trail, we are seeing clues as to who the DeSantises 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.

    . . .

    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 stared death in the face and came out the other side incandescently glowing with life and with love.

     

    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.

  22. 22.

    Roger Moore

    @Brachiator: ​
     

    First Ladies should be abolished.

    Good luck with that. Besides, even if you abolish First Spouse as an official role, you can’t keep them from influencing the other spouse who was actually elected. I would rather have the media publicize that Ron DeSantis is a puppet and Casey will be pulling the strings than have them hide it because the office holder’s spouse isn’t supposed to play any role.

  23. 23.

    Anonymous At Work

    1. As long as she isn’t Janet Huckabee, aka the Vindictive Preacher’s Wife, she’s not the worse spouse of a Presidential candidate.
    2. Ronnie-D is suffering from the Hierarchy of Media Attention: The higher the office, the more actual media attention.  At a certain level, stunts and, in his case, performative ‘owning the libs’ no longer is enough to advance.  You need ideas, personality, friends & proxies, a historical narrative, etc. to satiate media attention.  Ronnie lacks that.
      To me, the telling line is that “friends and family” was 8 people for the inauguration, probably including their 3 children.  That’s a sign that they lack depth beyond what we know.
  25. 25.

    Roger Moore

    @cliosfanboy:

    I still can’t wrap my head around someone meeting DeSantis and thinking he was romantically desirable, let alone fuckable.

    It sounds to me as if it was calculation rather than romance.  Casey decided Ron was going places, so she attached herself to him so she could get some of that power for herself.

  26. 26.

    Ruckus

    @cliosfanboy:

    There is someone for almost everyone.

    OK maybe not complete asshole drunks. But I’d bet even then, the odds are rather likely that there is. They may never be in the same place at the same time, but there is someone.

  27. 27.

    satby

    OT: my jambalaya came out great. Cajun style, not Creole, so no tomatoes; but Cajun andouille sausage, ham, chicken, the usual vegetables (ed: and seasonings), and the rice browned in the meat drippings before the homemade chicken broth was added. 10 minutes on the rice cycle in the InstaPot and YUM!

  29. 29.

    Elizabelle

    WaPost reader commenters can’t stand Casey either.  They see through the act; see the fascism of both.

    I am completely cynical about what any republican says about anything, particularly a Floridian that looks like she was created by a 3D printer.

  30. 30.

    Betty Cracker

    @Alison Rose: LOL!

    I read the linked “Democrat’s case” article in O-Sen earlier, and it’s pure drooling idiocy from an alleged Dem who lives in….wait for it…California.

    There were logical fallacies you could drive a truck through, starting with the absurd premise that “competence” is all that matters and Biden is old, so…

  31. 31.

    Joe Falco

    “Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ young presidential campaign is stumbling like a drunk fraternity bro with flop sweat.” They say like that that’s not a plus to some Republicans.

  32. 32.

    Brachiator

    @Roger Moore:

    RE: First Ladies should be abolished.

    Good luck with that. Besides, even if you abolish First Spouse as an official role, you can’t keep them from influencing the other spouse who was actually elected.

    Don’t care. We loved the team of Bill and Hillary Clinton, but fear what may happen with the DeSantis disaster. It’s arbitrary.  You can’t know how a spouse may influence the elected leader, or who else may have some sway.

    I recall reading something about the odious UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Nobody, not even the British press, gave a shit about her husband, what he thought or what he did. He was probably the most anonymous man in Britain.

    First Spouses should be equally anonymous.

    Also, in American history, First Ladies also became the official leaders of Washington society, often an entirely odious den of elitist bullshit.

    Yeah, it will be a tough position to abolish. It may take the election of a woman president to get the ball rolling. I could see a Protocol Officer being hired to spare a First Gentleman from having tea time in the White House.

  35. 35.

    Delk

    Treat her the way they treated Hillary during Bill’s presidency. Let’s see if they can handle it.

  36. 36.

    Brachiator

    @Baud:

    That’s why I will only have Official Consorts as president.

    Ha! Now that’s the ticket, at least in spirit.

  37. 37.

    different-church-lady

    “Governor, your human skin isn’t fitting you very well today.”

    ”Casey got it for me.”

  38. 38.

    Anonymous At Work

    Why WHY WHY was Trump doing an interview with FOX News and Bret Baier was either stupid enough (or crafty enough) to ask him about the documents case?  Anything Trump says will be seen by the prosecution and can be used against him uncontested.  Was Baier trying to get Trump in prison?

    Link:  https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/donald-trump-tells-fox-news-212844731.html

    This is why I’d never be the guy’s attorney: he won’t take orders to keep him safe from self-harm.

  39. 39.

    narya

    I’m always a bit torn by “candidate’s spouse” coverage, not least because, still, the spouse is likely female and the candidate male. I think the “tell” is why the candidate picked that spouse, and vice versa, and that dynamic is where I could make an argument that it’s relevant. Does one of them regard the other as a trophy of some kind? Do they appear to have a partnership that includes genuine affection for each other? What’s the reason that a candidate needs a “secret weapon”?

  41. 41.

    Scout211

    @Anonymous At Work: Why WHY WHY was Trump doing an interview with FOX News and Bret Baier was either stupid enough

    It was a taped interview. The judge just issued the order today for Trump not to talk about the evidence in the case.  And we know he never listens to his attorneys if they told him not to talk.

    Edited for clarity.

    The taped interview, which is set to air June 19 during Baier’s “Special Report” program, will be Trump’s first with one of the network’s straight-news journalists since his 2020 election loss.

  42. 42.

    Anonymous At Work

    @Scout211: Doesn’t matter.  Did none of his attorneys tell Trump not to talk to the media about the case and the consequence of presenting information?  Frankly, this might explain a few exits.  “Client refuses to listen to advice or help prepare case.  Parting gift was a book on prison shower etiquette.”

  43. 43.

    Princess

    I find this whole First Lady, governor’s mansion, first family, White House residence plus offices thing so distasteful and undemocratic. It’s a living breathing manifestation of European monarchy, long after the originals died a deserved death. It’s all completely toxic and bad for political culture. It’s also why a yahoo like RFK can get such traction as a candidate. Do you think anyone know who Angela Merkel’s brother’s son is?

  44. 44.

    Brachiator

    @different-church-lady:

    If you were married to Thatcher, wouldn’t you want to be anonymous?

    Denis Thatcher was an interesting character. He was the first male spouse of a prime minister, but never gave interviews. He deliberately kept a low profile.

    He served honorably during the Second World War and did enough to earn an early MBE as well as citations from the French government.

  45. 45.

    different-church-lady

    @Anonymous At Work:

    Did none of his attorneys tell Trump not to talk to the media about the case and the consequence of presenting information?

    He doesn’t have any attorneys anymore.

  46. 46.

    Jeffro

    @satby:Cajun style, not Creole, so no tomatoes

    …and here I thought I knew about cooking, cuisines, etc. (sigh)

    I guess it’s good to learn something new every day!

  47. 47.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Princess: ​
     

    Do you think anyone know who Angela Merkel’s brother’s son is?

    Perhaps not, but, if you think there aren’t families with generational political traditions in Europe, you are sorely mistaken.

  49. 49.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I remember how much the “two for the price of one!” thing freaked them out with the Clintons. And it isn’t just the De Sancti trying it on: I’m sure Susan Pompeo (First Lady of the CIA/State Department) saw herself as a future political celebrity

    OT: sounds like the Bret Baier trump interview isn’t going well

    Bradley P. Moss @BradMossEsq 43m

    If this clip is not being aired in digital ads by liberal groups by later tonight they are not doing their jobs. Just brutal.

  51. 51.

    Citizen Alan

    @Alison Rose: I don’t know. I haven’t seen pictures of the kids. Do they actually resemble him more than whichever state trooper is assigned to be her bodyguard?

  53. 53.

    Another Scott

    @Anonymous At Work: Let 10,000 memes bloom…

    Orin Kerr
    @OrinKerr

    Defendant defends his decision to drive drunk: “I was drunk and I wanted to drive.”
    7:19 PM · Jun 19, 2023

    Orin Kerr
    @OrinKerr

    Man charged with vehicular theft addresses his conduct: “I saw the car on the street, and I wanted to have it.”

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  54. 54.

    Citizen Alan

    @cliosfanboy: I have this mental image of them on a date, him saying “thigh food” instead of thai food (supposedly his way of weeding out uppity women from his personal dating pool), and, rather than correcting him, her reaction was to think “Yeah. This is the one. I can use him to get where I want to be.”

  57. 57.

    Scout211

    @different-church-lady: He doesn’t have any attorneys anymore.

    Not sure if you are joking but he still has Todd Blanche and Christopher Kise.

    In her first order after the indictment,US District Judge Aileen Cannon – a Trump appointee – told DOJ and Trump attorneys’ parties to get the ball rolling to obtain security clearances for the lawyers who will need them.

    Both of Trump’s attorneys – Blanche and Chris Kise – have already been in touch with the Justice Department about obtaining the necessary security clearances to try the case, a source familiar with the outreach told CNN Thursday evening.

  60. 60.

    Tony Jay

    That whole article is chilling. Basically it comes across as a synopsis for a To Die For reboot where Nicole Kidman’s character avoids the perils of marrying Matt Dillon and instead hooks up with a sociopathic clone of Richard Nixon who she tries to mould into a suitable vehicle for the American Right’s urge to power, only to discover that charisma and likability are something you need when campaigning outside of Florida.

    I think it’s supposed to be a black comedy, but it’s looking like a tragedy so far, because, y’know, not actually a movie.

  62. 62.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Tony Jay:

    hat whole article is chilling. Basically it comes across as a synopsis for a To Die Forreboot where Nicole Kidman’s character avoids the perils of marrying Matt Dillon and instead hooks up with a sociopathic clone of Richard Nixon who she tries to mould into a suitable vehicle for the American Right’s urge to power

    It boggles one with disbelief! I love that movie.

  63. 63.

    karen marie

    @Scout211: We know she’s a woman who has overcome the great trials of a breast cancer diagnosis.

     

    We I don’t know any such thing. All we I know is that there was a claim that she had breast cancer. A claim which came out when DeSantis was trying to avoid defending something he’d said or done.

    At least that’s how I remember it. YMMV.

  65. 65.

    Anonymous At Work

    @Scout211: Current motions and everything are per standard.  No contest on the gag order, Jack Smith arranged for Goldilocks documents for the 31 documents in the indictment, security clearance paperwork probably started as soon as charges were announced.

    So I’m not reading much into anything yet.

  67. 67.

    James E Powell

    I am really going to hate the fawning coverage of these two for the next year & a half. The political press will keep promoting & protecting them until they find another viable Not Trump Republican. So far, that’s nobody.

  68. 68.

    Johnnybuck

    Really annoys the fuck out of me the way these media shitheads ALWAYS take a poke at Hillary.

  69. 69.

    gene108

    @Princess:

    Do you think anyone know who Angela Merkel’s brother’s son is?

    Was her brother ever in prominent positions in the German government?

    From what I understand RFK, Sr. was kind of a big deal, before he was murdered.

    Also, I think TV crews were covering the campaign event when RFK, Sr. was assassinated, so there’s real time recordings of what happened, which makes it even more sensational to the public.

  70. 70.

    lowtechcyclist

    @different-church-lady: ​
     

    “Governor, your human skin isn’t fitting you very well today.”

    ”Casey got it for me.”

    Between this and the Ferdinand and Imelda comparison, I think you’ve won this thread, hands down.

  71. 71.

    Tony Jay

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    It’s a great movie because Kidman can convincingly sell that raw ambition minus long term plan + “I’m Hot, that works” car crash.

    I’m constantly boggled by RoDS’ catastrophic inability to rise to the moment  – the moment being Trump breaking the GOP’s traditional rules of succession and creating the space for a smart fascist to stand a roughly 50/50 chance of getting into the White House – but what’s equally boggling is Tacky O’s delusion that she can parlay ‘Distant Allure, by Wingnutaura’ into a shortcut to Absolute Power.

    That’s the problem with the Right inevitably going all revolutionary due to the diet of nonsense they feed their base. Any young thing who thinks of herself as too special to be working in the WKXG weathercenner forever can think she’s got a shot at backseat driving her talents into the White House garage.

    Life Lesson – Don’t expel all reality from your national political movement. That creates problems.

  73. 73.

    Citizen Alan

    @karen marie:  IIRC, Desantis basically disappeared for several days if not a full week, and there was speculation that he had caught a very bad case of covid, Which would have been very embarrassing in light of his political stances on the subject.. Then they came out with story about how casey had cancer, and he was in exclusion with her while she was being treated. The whole Thing seemed very improbable to me, in a lifetime movie of the week sort of way.

  74. 74.

    rikyrah

    Mrs. DeSantis doesn’t have an original or authentic bone in her body. She is as phony as her husband and just as rotten to the core. Spare me any of the ” she really doesn’t agree with Ron’s policies “. Yes, she does. She is in full throttle support of them. There is no using her to ” humanize” him, because she is just as dark and rotten.😠

  75. 75.

    gene108

    @Princess:

    Obviously there are. Power tries to maintain itself. But there nothing quite so institutionalized in the other western democracies.

    Many Western European democracies have monarchies to fill in for any lacking nepotism hires.

  83. 83.

    Brachiator

    @Citizen Alan:

    Then they came out with story about how casey had cancer, and he was in exclusion with her while she was being treated.

    Exclusion. Interesting slip or auto correct.

    I’d like to practice some exclusion on DeSantis.

  84. 84.

    Brachiator

    @gene108:

    From what I understand RFK, Sr. was kind of a big deal, before he was murdered.

    I feel so old.

    Yeah, Bobby Kennedy was kind of a big deal.

  85. 85.

    OB-118

    @eversor: Humans having been (mostly) ruled by some form of Monarch for millennia, it may not be so much “royal envy” as a kind of genetic impulse. It may take generations to wash it out of our collective memory.

  87. 87.

    kalakal

    @Brachiator:

    I recall reading something about the odious UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Nobody, not even the British press, gave a shit about her husband, what he thought or what he did. He was probably the most anonymous man in Britain.

     

    Dennis Thatcher was a very rich ex Oil exec who was perfectly happy in the shadows though he may well have had a lot more influence than the public knee. The biggest family problem Thatch had was her idiot son who had a gift for fucking up in public including being convicted in South Africa of taking part in an attempted coup in Equitorial Guinea.

    Dennis was well known to Private Readers for the “Dear Bill” letters, a satire on the Thatcher years in the form of his letters to the editor of the Daily Telegraph, William Deedes

    Dear Bill

  88. 88.

    Jerzy Russian

    @rikyrah:  There was only one theme song I did not recognize.   At one point I watched most of  the other shows featured in that clip on a regular basis.

  89. 89.

    geg6

    @rikyrah:

    Great to see a real woman win one of these (and in my state!).  Not really into the whole beauty contest thing but this is a step forward at least.

  91. 91.

    Betty Cracker

    @rikyrah: They seem to be a pair of sociopaths who deserve each other. I’m relishing every minute of the 2024 rollout fail parade! 🤡🤡

  93. 93.

    Kay

    Morons, discussing things:

    Michael Hobbes
    @RottenInDenmark
    RFK Jr.: Wifi radiation opens up your blood-brain barrier so all these toxins that are in your body can now go into your brain.
    Rogan: How does wifi open up your blood-brain barrier?
    RFK Jr.: Now you’ve gone beyond my expertise.

  94. 94.

    dm

    @WaterGirl:

    Can the worst of it be summarized in 25 words or less?

    Take your mind back to late 1992-93, and reading profiles of the Clintons, and that “witch” Hillary.

    Remember the joke about the gas station attendant, former boyfriend of Hillary, Bill saying, “If you’d married him instead of me, you’d be the wife of a gas station attendant” and Hillary replying, “If I’d married him instead of you, he’d be running for President and you’d be a gas station attendant”?

    It’s that sort of thing, only starring the execrable DeSantises, which is trigger-warning enough. If Ron becomes the Republican candidate, we’ll hear the exact same joke told about them.

  96. 96.

    raven

    @gene108: At 3:03 in “Learning to Fly” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers there is a flash of RFK on the floor after being shot. Oddly that day was the first time I did acid and the video is about a kid doing just that. Strange days they were.

  97. 97.

    dm

    @Scout211:

    [judge orders security clearances all around

    Given the classification of some of the materials in this case, that could take a year or so…..

  98. 98.

    James E Powell

    @Brachiator:

    I feel so old.

    Yeah, Bobby Kennedy was kind of a big deal.

    Remember when everyone thought they were going to be a dynasty? Everywhere you looked there was a Kennedy. After that first generation of John, Bobby, and Ted, none of them ever amounted to anything in politics. Didn’t we figure at least one senator out of the group?

  100. 100.

    Brachiator

     

    @bbleh:

    I wasn’t sure whether it was tongue-in-cheek.

    Very possibly. But even the irony made me feel old.

    A lot of people really loved Bobby. My history teacher had us all follow his California primary campaign, and his coming to Los Angeles made us feel like we were part of history. And of course we watched the TV events.

  101. 101.

    Brachiator

    UK breaking news… From BBC News.

    MPs have backed a report that found Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over lockdown parties at Downing Street.

    The Commons voted overwhelmingly in support of the report, by 354 to seven.

    No vote was recorded for 225 MPs, because they either abstained or did not turn up to vote.

    Parliament takes out its trash.

  103. 103.

    Scout211

    A couple more tidbits from Trump’s confessional to Bret Baier:

    Trump: First of all, I won in 2020 by a lot

    Baier: You lost the 2020 election

    Trump: They were counting ballots, not the authenticity of the ballot. The ballots were fake ballots.

    pic.twitter.com/yrM5gVV1ei— Acyn (@Acyn) June 19, 2023

    Baier: Why not just hand them over?

    Trump: Because I had boxes, I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things

    pic.twitter.com/PwW85wlTzH— Acyn (@Acyn) June 19, 2023

  104. 104.

    Elizabelle

    Didn’t read the WaPost article, but the WaPost readers are taking the DeSanti apart.  But for a few low energy trolls, it seems 98% of the comments are negative.  Almost 7,000 comments. Many people calling them fascists.

    I posted yesterday saying she is scary…After thinking about this idiotically long rambling article, I concluded he is as scared of this dame as I am. He probably sleeps with one eye open, which may explain his dullard expression.

    She’s on a balcony in Fantasy Land …singing “Don’t Cry For Me, Tallahassee”

    This is a strange content free piece as if they float above their policies and rhetoric. You could write about Eva Braun and ambitious Adolf on the mashed potato circuit like this too. Fortunately, the orange menace is after Ron and he does funny things like wear ludicrous white boots and eat pudding with his fingers, so he will hopefully will flame out. You wouldn’t get any of that from this hallmark channel piece!

    Reading some pieces from the early Hitler era, the mainstream press in the US and UK did some similar normalizing. And look how well that turned out.

    “When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.”—Turkish proverb.

    These two con artists would normally be peddling a religion, they just happened to fall into politics instead. She is a laughing stock on Twitter. They call her Tackie O, Jackie No, and there’s always a side by side photo of she and Eddie Munster. They deserve all the cheap shots they get just for being such awful people.

    I thought that last comment was really interesting. Would usually be televangelists. There is a template for that.  In a weird way, maybe that makes them relatable and familiar to some of their “sheep.”

  105. 105.

    brendancalling

    Not to TMI everyone, but as someone with more than a little experience in the D&S scene, Ron sounds like your classic sub.

    I’d bet no small amount of money that in private he wears a collar, and in public he wears something (perhaps unrecognizable to anyone but them) indicating his status in the relationship.

  106. 106.

    Matt McIrvin

    @James E Powell: Joe Kennedy III, who I guess is RFK Jr.’s nephew, did serve in the House for a while, then lost a strange primary bid for the Senate against Ed Markey and is now special envoy for Northern Ireland.

  107. 107.

    Mike in NC

    Ron does need the extra three inches those cowboy boots give him. Does he shop at the same shoe store as Marco Rubio?

  108. 108.

    Matt McIrvin

    @rikyrah: I’m embarrassed to say I don’t recognize the second-to-last one. I’m sure it was one of those family sitcoms that aired slightly later than the era when I was paying attention. Or else I just forgot how the theme song went.

    All the others… yes.

  111. 111.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @NotMax: I have a vague memory of liking Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (the current Main Character’s sister) when she was…. Lite Guv of Maryland? She lost the race for the Gov’ship in ’02, which was a rough year for Dems, as many of us recall

  112. 112.

    piratedan

    she’s Mrs. Cruel Girl… I don’t mind her ambition, I mind the fact that her politics are contemptible.

  114. 114.

    Jerzy Russian

    @zhena gogolia:   Waylon Jennings sang the Dukes of Hazzard theme.  It was near the beginning.  The one I did not recognize was second or third from the end.

    I watched a lot of the Dukes of Hazzard back in the day.  I still have a crunch on Barbara Bach, who played Daisy Duke.

  116. 116.

    rikyrah

    @gene108:

    I remember the pictures  of the people standing by the railroad tracks as his body crossed the country back from California to the East Coast.

     

    The 60’s were a crazy time . Remember, just Two months before, MLK had been assassinated.

  118. 118.

    Citizen Alan

    @Jerzy Russian: Ironically, the fact that Barbara Bach was the only person on that show I never had a crush on was a big clue as to my future sexuality (and also a big hint as early as age 12 that I would never be happy until I left Mississippi).

  119. 119.

    Kent

    @rikyrah:I honestly think this country would have been different if Bobby had not been killed and beat Nixon

    He would not have beaten Nixon.  That is wishful thinking.  In fact he might might well have lost worse than Humphrey by losing Texas which would have been more skeptical of him due to his civil rights advocacy.

  120. 120.

    Citizen Alan

    @rikyrah: Oh God yes! The conservative take-over of SCOTUS started with Nixon, who made Burger Chief Justice (after Abe Fortas got shot down by the GOP Senate over a matter of $20k or so in speaking fees, as I recall. How naive everyone was back in the day!) And he put Rehnquist on the Court which gave us the next Chief Justice. If a Dem had been President from 68-72, the liberals would have dominated the Judiciary at least up to the end of the last century!

  121. 121.

    Tehanu

    @Alison Rose:  What you said. The vibe I get from her is Evita Peron with swastikas.

    @Brachiator:  A lot of people really loved Bobby.

    That would include me. I was in college in 1968 and was one of the few of my classmates who supported him over Gene McCarthy. Seeing his son spouting all this anti-vaxx crap breaks my heart.

  122. 122.

    Citizen Alan

    @Kent: Was it? The 1968 election was before my time. But outside of the Southern Strategy, did Nixon have anything going for him other than “I am not Lyndon Johnson, and I promise to end the Vietnam War”? RFK could say the same thing, and unlike Nixon, both statements would have been true.

  123. 123.

    Kent

    @Citizen Alan: What Nixon had going for him was a return to normalcy in middle America after the turbulent 60s.  This was all pre-Watergate.  You have to look at Nixon through the filter of being Eisenhower’s 2-term VP.  A whole lot of middle America longed for a return to the Eisenhower days which were just 8 years previous at that point.  Exactly as far in the past as the Obama Administration is today.

    Look at a 1968 electoral map and try to decide which Nixon states that Humphry lost would have flipped to Kennedy.  I don’t see any frankly.  To the contrary, Humphrey narrowly won Texas by 1 point and Kennedy could easily have lost there due to race.  The 1968 election was a backlash against the 60s and Vietnam.

    Plus in 1968 the country was falling into recession driven in part by Johnson’s war spending.  And with Kennedy on the ballot, some of the southern states that went for Wallace might have flipped to Nixon and his Southern Strategy as the thought of RFK in the White House might have focused the minds of southern racists.

    If 1968 was going to be a favorable year for Democrats then Johnson would never have dropped out and chosen to become a 1-term president.  He knew he was likely to lose, as was any other Democrat.

  124. 124.

    Mike in NC

    @Citizen Alan:  I’m old enough to remember that Nixon had a “secret” plan to end the war in Vietnam, and pretty much nobody in Congress or the media challenged him on that nonsense. So maybe no surprise that a later idiot claimed he would “build a great wall and Mexico will pay for it” and the rubes fell for it all over again.

  125. 125.

    Gretchen

    Interesting that she was actually studying Melania to dress like her. Her style is either those stupid sundresses with the bows on the shoulders, or what she thinks Jackie Kennedy would have worn but much tackier and poorly fitting. I’m looking forward to the two of them stewing in their failed dreams of grandeur when the campaign implodes.

  128. 128.

    JohnC

    @rikyrah:  Robert Kennedy’s speech announcing MLK’s assassination

    RFK had been about to speak at a campaign rally when the news came – the crowd didn’t know yet. This isn’t a prepared speech, it’s just him trying to talk about what has happened. This is the leader we might have had instead of Nixon

    I was in kindergarten, but I remember seeing the physical Time magazine with the cover story about RFK’s murder and looking at the pictures showing where the bullet had hit his brain.

  129. 129.

    Origuy

    I remember RFK flying into Bloomington’s tiny airport for the Indiana primary, which was a turning point for the campaign. I was in sixth grade and the school was only a few miles away, so they put us on buses and took us to see him land.

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