Let me level with you right from go: I have not been following the Ron DeSantis situation all that closely. A certain class of pundits has decided to pretend that the extreme-right Florida governor is 2024's Scary GOP Electoral Unicorn—the sleek professional who weds, ahem, populist positions (big-time bigot, wants to outlaw school) with canny political instincts (projected, imaginary) in an indefatigable package sure to capture both the conservative base and the fabled independents—but, since those same pundits did this same theatrical performance on behalf of Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, Sarah Palin, and Ted Cruz, well, I guess I'm waiting for more information. In any event DeSantis probably is running for the Republican nomination for president. You can tell it's a real possibility, because it has roused Donald Trump to hit him with a corny nickname: Ron DeSanctimonious.
Anyway! The Daily Beast has a Ron DeSantis story today, concerning the governor's "soft skills," the constellation of habits and attributes that govern how smoothly a person interacts with the people around them. Specifically, the story is about DeSantis not having any of those: He is cold, closed-off, and hyper-scripted; he is averse to "small talk, general pleasantries, and any unplanned interactions with the public." Also, he eats like a big gross pig, spraying food-shrapnel around like a damn wood-chipper:
The chatter over DeSantis’ public engagement has also surfaced past unflattering stories about his social skills—particularly, his propensity to devour food during meetings.
“He would sit in meetings and eat in front of people,” a former DeSantis staffer told The Daily Beast, “always like a starving animal who has never eaten before… getting shit everywhere.”Daily Beast
The story's most vivid detail concerns DeSantis once memorably slurping chocolate pudding out of his own bare goddamn hand like a fucking freak:
Enshrined in DeSantis lore is an episode from four years ago: During a private plane trip from Tallahassee to Washington, D.C., in March of 2019, DeSantis enjoyed a chocolate pudding dessert—by eating it with three of his fingers, according to two sources familiar with the incident.
It's the "three of his fingers" detail that really makes this anecdote sing. Because now you kind of can't help but picture it, right? Not just "with his fingers" or "out of his hand," but specifically three fingers. Really disturbing stuff!
This sparked a discussion in the incredibly deranged Defector news-and-politics Slack channel this morning. When you picture Ron DeSantis eating "a chocolate pudding dessert" with three fingers of his bare hand, which three are you picturing?
The likeliest possibility seems to me to be a pincer type of deal: The index and middle finger, plus the thumb, sort of gently pinching a glob of pudding like a wad of chaw and lifting it to the face of Ron DeSantis, to be slurped at by his large wet tongue, with the now spit-slicked pincer then returning to the chocolate pudding dessert, like the world's most accursed prize-machine claw, for another disgusting saliva-impregnated clot of chocolate goop. But that is only one of the possibilities. And, if I remember grade-school playground debates accurately, the thumb, strictly speaking, is not a finger, so we are playing a little loose with the definitions here.
There is also what I am calling the garden-spade technique: Three fingers lined up and pressed tightly together, stabbing down into the pudding dessert and scooping out a little heap. This could be the index, middle, and ring fingers (a Large spade) or the middle, ring, and pinky fingers (Small). This technique could get a little awkward on approach to Ron DeSantis's slavering mouth and writhing tongue: Does he keep the pudding on top of the spade all the way, requiring him to lift his elbow all the way up above his head? Or does he invert the spade, which allows him to keep his elbow by his side, and simply press the heap of pudding directly on his wet palate, at some risk of dropping pudding into his lap or onto his shirtfront. Or does he go for some kind of sick sideways approach, with the spade perpendicular to the line of his mouth and the plane of his tongue?
Lastly, there is what I consider the most disturbing possibility, which is that he went fork-and-knife mode with his fingers: two from one hand, one from the other hand. Picturing Ron DeSantis using two fingers on one hand and one on the other like a goddamn cutlery set to eat chocolate pudding is incredibly awful and I hate it. I guess the "knife" in this setup would have to be the pinky, just for the ease of using it without the rest of the hand getting in the way.
What seems certain is that any of these methods necessarily would involve a lot of tongue. Imagine the noises. The smacking and slurping and the wet sucking sounds. Various mmms and grunts of pleasure and concentration. Picture him cleaning between his fingers with his tongue. Being all like "Oh, so good," with pudding all over his cheeks, as he sends his slimed hand back for another plug of viscous brown sludge. Offering you a handful of pudding. Mother of God.
Do you know which three fingers Ron DeSantis used to slurp up a pudding dessert like a fucking goblin in front of a bunch of people on an airplane? Do you possibly have vivid smartphone video of the governor of Florida sucking chocolate mud off of his fingers like a sick mutant from hell? Please help us resolve this mystery by sending it to patrick@defector.com immediately.
