Jim has a sadly hilarious Jolt on the media’s fascination with how the name “DeSantis” should be pronounced, which may or may not be fueled by a claim by Donald Trump (or is it “Drumpf“?) that the Florida governor is thin-skinned about the pronunciation . . . the evidence for which, as Jim observes, appears to be nothing more than Trump’s say-so.
It got me to thinking about Trump’s obsession with the governor’s given name, which may be even nuttier than the new meanderings about his surname. This was a topic on The Editors earlier this week, too: Why does Trump insist on referring to DeSantis as “Rob”?
There have been suggestions that it’s meant to convey that DeSantis is a figure so trivial that Trump, a colossus bestriding the world, cannot be bothered to remember his name. That wasn’t doing it for me. Not because it doesn’t make sense; rather, it makes perfect sense . . . but that means it is more coherent and much more subtle than what we’ve come to expect from the former president. Don’t get me wrong: Donald Trump can be hilarious, with great comic timing, but subtle he ain’t (I mean . . . DeSanctimonious?).
Anyway, near as I can tell, DeSantis has as little to do with the meshugas over his first name as over his last. Instead, it is the classic case of Ol’ Covfefe’s failing to notice and correct a “milktoast” spelling error and, when called on it, acting as if this error was actually his plan all along.
On March 22, the Daily Mail ran a story about how two Trump myrmidons had blasted the Florida governor over his remarks about Trump’s then-imminent indictment by the Manhattan district attorney. The long headline had a typo, which has since been corrected. In pertinent part, it read: “Steve Bannon calls Rob DeSantis a ‘weasel’ and Mike Lindell brands him ‘disgusting’ for his response to Trump’s looming indictment” (emphasis added).
Naturally, Trump was enthused by this story, but he’s not on Twitter anymore so retweeting it was not an option. He opted to send out an “in case you missed it” press release. As the Independent explains, when the Trump press team blasted out the press release, the obvious typo went uncorrected. This prompted a response from the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, the Trump biographer whose observations preoccupy him. She tweeted: “Trump now calling DeSantis ‘Rob’ in press releases.”
Haberman was quick to add: “Apparently they [the Trump press team] were quoting the Daily Mail and didn’t change.” Trump, however, has seized on her first tweet, which intimated that Trump had referred to DeSantis as “Rob” on purpose, rather than because he and his staff failed to spot a typo.
In other words, it was a “perfect” press release, and anyone who says otherwise is a Deep State enemy of the people! Anyway, that’s how Ron became “Rob.”