“Peaky Blinders” producers slam Ron DeSantis for putting their clips in his mocked anti-LGBTQ+ ad

The team behind the BBC/Netflix series Peaky Blinders has denounced a bizarre, wildly anti-LGBTQ+ video posted by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) presidential campaign.

The video, which has received widespread criticism, contrasts former president Donald Trump’s past support for the LGBTQ+ community with DeSantis’s anti-LGBTQ+ agenda. It opens with clips of Trump – DeSantis’s top primary opponent – expressing support for LGBTQ+ people, before shifting to a montage of images of DeSantis with headlines touting anti-LGBTQ+ laws the Florida Republican has signed. Oddly, the clip also includes footage of British actor Cillian Murphy’s character Tommy Shelby from Peaky Blinders, Brad Pitt’s character from the 2004 film Troy, Christian Bale’s character from American Psycho, and images of shirtless bodybuilders.

Related:

Pete Buttigieg slams Ron DeSantis ad with “oiled-up shirtless bodybuilders”

Buttigieg said that DeSantis should be thinking about how to help Americans, not how to attack LGBTQ+ people.

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In a joint statement posted to Peaky Blinders’s official Twitter account on Wednesday, the show’s producers blasted the DeSantis campaign and the video’s anti-LGBTQ+ message.

“On behalf of the partners of Peaky Blinders — Steven Knight, Cillian Murphy, Caryn Mandabach Productions, Tiger Aspect Productions, and Banijay Rights — we confirm the footage of Tommy Shelby’s character used within the video posted by Ron DeSantis’ campaign was obtained without permission or official license,” the statement reads. “We do not support nor endorse the video’s narrative and strongly disapprove of the use of the content in this manner.”

The video, which was posted by DeSantis’s “Rapid Response” campaign Twitter account @DeSantisWarRoom last week, does not appear to have been produced by the Florida Republican’s 2024 presidential campaign. It was first shared by Twitter account @ProudElephantUS on June 30.

Still, the DeSantis campaign had received both criticism and ridicule for reposting the blatantly anti-LGBTQ+ clip.

On Sunday, out Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg mocked the “strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled-up shirtless bodybuilders” before blasting DeSantis for focusing on bullying marginalized groups rather than helping Americans.

The New Republic called the video “the weirdest ad in American political history.”

Republicans, including DeSantis’s primary rivals Will Hurd and Chris Christie, have also joined the chorus of voices blasting the video. Disgraced gay Rep. George Santos (R-NY) told The Hill that he can no longer support DeSantis’s efforts “to diminish and remove rights away from people like myself.” LGBTQ+ conservative group Log Cabin Republicans called the ad “divisive and desperate,” adding that the candidate, who is currently polling at around 21.5%, had “alienated swing-state and younger voters.” Gay conservative activist David Leatherwood said that the ad was “a slap in the face, and makes any LGBT person supporting DeSantis look like an absolute idiot.”

DeSantis defended the video in an interview with conservative commentator Tomi Lahren on her streaming show Tomi Lahren is Fearless.

“Identifying Donald Trump as really being a pioneer in injecting gender ideology into the mainstream, where he was having men compete against women in his beauty pageants — I think that’s totally fair game, because he’s now campaigning saying the opposite,” DeSantis said.