New York Times correspondent, best-selling author, and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman revealed that the much-derided anti-LGBTQ video attacking ex-President Donald Trump was produced by a Ron DeSantis staffer and “passed off” to a supporter for publication.

“To wrap up ‘Pride Month,’ let’s hear from the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate it…” the DeSantis War Room tweeted on June 30, along with a video that would be derided near-universally as bizarre and rabidly homophobic — yet also oddly homoerotic.

The video appeared in the tweet to originate from another account, and merely retweeted and commented on by the official DeSantis campaign account:

To wrap up “Pride Month,” let’s hear from the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate it…

https://t.co/FT7LdW4vls

— DeSantis War Room (@DeSantisWarRoom) June 30, 2023

The account owner later deleted the video.

But according to a deep dive on the DeSantis campaign “reboot” published by Haberman and Shane Goldmacher, the retweet was a subterfuge to conceal the fact that the video was produced in-house:

One recent move that drew intense blowback, including from Republicans, was the campaign’s sharing of a bizarre video on Twitter that attacked Mr. Trump as too friendly to L.G.B.T.Q. people and showed Mr. DeSantis with lasers coming out of his eyes. The video drew a range of denunciations, with some calling it homophobic and others homoerotic before it was deleted.

But it turns out to be more of a self-inflicted wound than was previously known: A DeSantis campaign aide had originally produced the video internally, passing it off to an outside supporter to post it first and making it appear as if it was generated independently, according to a person with knowledge of the incident.

The DeSantis campaign declined to comment on specific questions about its spending, the candidate’s travel and the video. The communications director, Andrew Romeo, said in a statement that Mr. DeSantis was “ready to prove the doubters wrong again and our campaign is prepared to execute on his vision for the Great American Comeback.”

The Haberman/Goldmacher article’s headline and subhed — “A ‘Leaner-Meaner’ DeSantis Campaign Faces a Reboot and a Reckoning
The campaign’s missteps and swelling costs have made donors and allies anxious. One person close to the Florida governor said he had experienced a “challenging learning curve.” — don’t paint DeSantis and his presidential bid in a favorable light.

The post Maggie Haberman Source Says Bonkers Anti-LGBTQ Attack On Trump Was Made By DeSantis Camp — And ‘Passed Off’ To a Supporter first appeared on Mediaite.

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