Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is the subject of an in-depth piece by Financial Times correspondent Joshua Chaffin, and fellow journalist Alex MacGillis seems to think this is the big “gotcha” moment:
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
Here’s the part from the original column that MacGillis is referring to:
In his recent pandemic memoir, What Just Happened: Notes on a Long Year, the author and critic Charles Finch recalled two things about his former classmate, known then as “D”: he did an uncanny impression of baseball star Jose Canseco and, according to a friend, 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, indeed. In a very long, very detailed column that ultimately (and maybe in spite of itself) makes DeSantis look pretty good, this is the part that stands out to MacGillis?
Why would that be, one wonders?
When you can’t attack his great policies, y’all really dig deep for your garbage reporting. 😂
Embarrassing. pic.twitter.com/fqmD1U3Wx6
— ☘️𝕃𝕦𝕔𝕜𝕪 Ƒʉͫcͧкͭιͪηͣ 𝕄𝕔𝔾𝕖𝕖 ❁ (@LuckyMcGee) October 22, 2022
You had dig into 29th paragraph of this article to smear a politician you don't like. This a second hand account of something that happened while he was in college.
Siri: what is a hack?
— Tanner🇺🇸 (@wakeari60) October 22, 2022
https://twitter.com/curtisspicoli9/status/1583955399828336640?s=20&t=0Bc3drnLwPLN7_jypDQG6w
They are.
Well that should hand the governorship to Charlie Crist for sure!
— 🌸 Deb H 🌸 (@deb_h7) October 22, 2022
You got him now.
— BTME (@btme87) October 22, 2022
Those walls, always closing in and yet somehow never quite making it.
Even supporters of MacGillis’ journalism questioned the focus on this aspect of the story:
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
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
Small detail, for sure. Striking? Maybe not so much. It’s actually a bit surprising he didn’t go with “Ron DeSantis did Jose Canseco impression while in college” but maybe he’ll get around to that.
DeSantis is so squeaky clean the best dirt they can find on him is how he pronounces “Thai”
Let that sink in. 😂
— LibertyJ (@LibertyJen) October 23, 2022
Let that sink in.
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