A group backing former President Donald Trump on Friday put out a bizarre television ad slamming Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for supposedly using his fingers to eat chocolate pudding.
The pro-Trump Make America Great Again PAC used an unconfirmed report of DeSantis’s odd snack-eating method to attack the potential presidential rival for supposedly favoring cuts to popular retirement programs.
“DeSantis has his dirty fingers all over senior entitlements,” a narrator intones in the 30-second spot. “Like cutting Medicare, slashing Social Security, even raising the retirement age.”
The narrator continues to trash Trump’s main primary rival as an actor dips his fingers into containers of chocolate pudding and gobbles down the gooey snack.
“Tell Ron DeSantis to keep his pudding fingers off our money,” the narrator says. “And someone get that man a spoon.”
DeSantis says he wants to keep the retirement programs strong and does not favor any immediate cuts. The votes came on bills that were advisory and had no realistic chance of causing changes to the programs.
The ad riffs on a little-known report that DeSantis once used three fingers to scoop up pudding during a 2019 private plane ride.
The odd issue resurfaced recently when DeSantis denied it in an interview with British newsman Piers Morgan — and sought to turn the report into political gold.
“Pudding? Is that really the best you got?” DeSantis. “Bring it on.”
The new ad is the latest salvo from Trumpworld as the former president seeks to bloody up DeSantis ahead of a possible Republican presidential primary matchup.
An initial Trump ad also focused on DeSantis’s support for cutting the popular retirement programs when he was a conservative Florida congressman.
DeSantis, who has not yet entered the presidential race, has mostly kept his powder dry as Team Trump goes after him.
The former president has opened up a wider lead in polls over DeSantis in recent weeks as Republicans voters rally behind him amid mushrooming legal woes.
Recent GOP polls of voters in states like South Carolina, Kentucky and Massachusetts show Trump consolidating support of around 50% of Republican voters, about double the support of DeSantis with others far behind.
