Awkward Americans see themselves in Ron Desantis

After watching awkward videos of Ron DeSantis, Derek Guy had a horrifying realization.

Guy, a fashion writer known as the “Menswear Guy” to his large following on social media, had noticed people on X, formerly known as Twitter, making fun of the Florida governor and Republican presidential hopeful for throwing off weird vibes on the campaign trail. Some of these moments have been captured on video, as things tend to be during a presidential campaign: DeSantis struggling to make small talk with voters; bursting into strange paroxysms of wide-mouthed laughter; appearing to sugar-shame a child drinking an Icee at an Iowa fair.

“What’s your name?” DeSantis asked a voter in a recent clip from a New Hampshire diner.

“Tim,” the man responds.

“Okay,” says DeSantis.

In another video, from a party after the Iowa GOP’s Lincoln Dinner, DeSantis stands ramrod straight, taking gulps of beer and checking the time on his phone and telling potential voters that normally he would already be asleep.

As he sought to connect with voters and donors, critics said DeSantis had resembled — to quote a couple of posts — “a robot put together from scrapped spare parts from Disney’s The Hall of Presidents” or “an extraterrestrial in a skin-suit trying to learn to be human.”

But when Guy, the menswear writer, watched a video of DeSantis cycling through four different facial expressions in about three seconds during a news conference, he saw something even more disturbing.

“Oh, God,” he remembers saying to himself. “That’s me.”

The governor’s anti-charisma — his apparent struggles to make small talk, his propensity for letting a smile fall too quickly from his face — reminded Guy of himself at parties. Or the time he had no idea what to say after a fan of his fashion writing recognized him at a tailoring shop.

“It was exactly like those DeSantis moments,” he said. “A normal human being would understand how to light up your face, how to engage, how to say the right thing. But DeSantis doesn’t have that. And I definitely don’t have that.”

Guy is not the only awkward American who has identified with DeSantis as he has emerged as the Awkward Candidate.

“Like Ron DeSantis, I spend every day trying to act like a human,” said Michelle Witherspoon, an environmental consultant in California.

Every time I watch the videos, I cringe,” said Kate Ecke, a therapist from New Jersey who recently forgot to bring identification when picking up her child at summer camp and subsequently “really weirded out” a counselor by offering to show her C-section scar as proof of motherhood. “But I’m cringing because I’ve been that person.”

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pa3TmqOorZ6csm%2BvzqZmraCimq6le5Jsam1vZmaEbq3WpK6aqpRirq6x0aKamqajYsCmsYytn56lo5q5t7HSZqCnZaKku26wxKyYp6yZqA%3D%3D