DeSantis targets a significant primary demographic: Insecure men

There are three obvious reasons that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign promoted an aggressively anti-LGBTQ+ ad on social media last week.

The first is that DeSantis is not making any headway in his efforts to overtake Republican front-runner Donald Trump. In part, this is because DeSantis is competing with Trump for the former president’s base of support on terrain that is continually being defined by Trump. DeSantis’s team undoubtedly pushed out the self-consciously controversial ad knowing it might earn him some much-needed attention — attention in which he could talk about how Trump was unacceptably welcoming of LGBTQ people.