Ron DeSantis’s Only Hope Is to Beat Trump From the Hard Right

Even by the standards of today’s political ads, the video that recently roiled the Republican presidential race is not particularly subtle. In it, a talking head accuses Florida Governor Ron DeSantis of producing “some of the harshest, most draconian laws that literally threaten trans existence.” Headlines like “DeSantis Signs ‘Most Extreme Slate of Anti-Trans Laws in Modern History’” flit across the screen. The twist: This was not an attack ad against DeSantis. The clip was shared by his own team on Twitter, and presented as an attack on Donald Trump for being too soft on LGBTQ issues.

With its slapdash presentation and internet-meme imagery, the video could easily be dismissed as the half-baked output of a . But in fact, DeSantis’s anti-trans