Journalist Brutally Mocked for Spreading 20-Year-Old Gossip About DeSantis: 'The Walls Are Closing In'
ProPublica reporter Alec MacGillis apparently thought he had the stinging fatal blow to the career of Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis — that is, until the brutal mocking of his supposedly devastating point kicked in.
MacGillis jumped onto social media Saturday with what he evidently thought was proof that the governor was a racist or a misogynist or a dunce or something.
He shared an anonymous claim that back in college at Yale University, DeSantis pronounced the words “Thai food” as “thigh food.”
“Yikes,” MacGillis tweeted. “According to a friend, DeSantis would tell dates he liked Thai food, but pronounced it ‘thigh.’ If they corrected him, Finch wrote, he would find an excuse to leave. ‘He didn’t want a girlfriend who corrected him.'”
Yikes: “According to a friend, DeSantis would tell dates he liked Thai food, but pronounced it ‘thigh.’ If they corrected him, Finch wrote, he would find an excuse to leave. ‘He didn’t want a girlfriend who corrected him.'” @JoshuaChaffin: https://t.co/hgPwPVhqdp
— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) October 22, 2022
The claim is seen in Charles Finch’s pandemic memoir “What Just Happened: Notes on a Long Year,” published last year, Fox News reported.
DeSantis probably doesn’t have much to worry about with ankle biters like MacGillis as he holds a big lead in the gubernatorial race. He is so popular in Florida that when he bounded up on stage during a recent Lynyrd Skynyrd concert, the crowd went wild and erupted into a chant of “USA, USA!”
Whatever his end goal, MacGillis had the tables turned on him as Twitter users mocked him for poor journalistic practices and for using an anonymous source from decades ago as some sort of gotcha attack on the governor.
Even an apparent MacGillis admirer called his post “disappointing.”
Damn Alec. You’re one of the few true objective journalists left and you pull and highlight heresay quote from 20 years ago from a “friend”. Disappointing.
— Martin S Gland (@Msgland) October 23, 2022
MacGillis didn’t back down in the face of that tweet, though, insisting a hearsay quote from decades ago was “striking.”
Point taken. But I trust both the quoted author and the FT reporter enough to cite it. It’s a small but striking detail.
— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) October 23, 2022
Others were filled with disdain about the lack of standards he displayed.
I mean.
Biden hung out with segregationists and Harris kept innocent men in prison to advance her career, but this is bad too.
I guess. https://t.co/HKqdFY20iI— Chad Felix Greene (@chadfelixg) October 23, 2022
Translation: I am no longer an objective journalist and just retweet “he said she said” garbage.
— Grumpy Nadya’s Hoodad (@RealGrumpyNadya) October 23, 2022
*This* is what they are slinging at DeSantis? Pathetic
Also, no one wants a boyfriend or girlfriend who corrects them, and if they do it on the first date it’s a really bad sign https://t.co/4IvqgdY90i
— Jennifer Van Laar (@jenvanlaar) October 22, 2022
What are you in high school? LOL!!! This seems like high school girl gossip!!!! 😂😂 “Oh he left them because they corrected him…” Blah blah blah. Geesh you people have no scruples. https://t.co/2VcF0FPLs2
— 🇺🇸🇵🇷Dania Alexandrino🇺🇸🇵🇷 (@DaniaPeriodista) October 24, 2022
It’s over guys. DeSantis is done.
How pathetic are these idiots? They have been working overtime since 2018 to find dirt on the governor, and this is the worst they could come up with. 😂😂😂 https://t.co/l6QRtg9A5L
— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) October 22, 2022
Referencing the phrase left-wing pundits seem to constantly employ when they want to force people to imagine that a Republican is going down, Ezra Levant joked that the “walls are closing in” around DeSantis with this shocking Thai food revelation.
Guys.
I think the walls are closing in on DeSantis.
They’ve finally got him cornered.
I don’t believe he’ll survive the scandal of a British newspaper’s investigation revealing that, 25 years ago, when he was a student, he once pronounced Thai as thigh.
It’s over. https://t.co/U4nSVzcDoA
— Ezra Levant 🍁🚛 (@ezralevant) October 23, 2022
Despite the ongoing sniping from the left, DeSantis seems to be cruising to re-election in the November midterm. Earlier this month, he had a nearly unsinkable 11-point lead over his Democratic opponent, former Gov. Charlie Crist.
He enjoys national renown, too.
In July, DeSantis was one of only two politicians who had a net positive favorability rating in a national poll. The poll conducted nationwide — and not just in Florida — found that nearly every politician mentioned to respondents had a net negative rating except for DeSantis and one other — South Carolina GOP Sen. Tim Scott.
No matter how “striking” Alec MacGillis finds a decades-old anonymous claim about the governor’s word pronunciations, it seems unlikely to be a death blow to DeSantis’ political career.
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