DeSantis donors are unhappy with the meme war he’s fighting

Ron DeSantis‘s donors are getting fed up as information continues to surface regarding his campaign’s involvement in hateful ads that at first appeared to be made by outside supporters.

One major unnamed donor told Rolling Stone, “If they keep blowing money on f**ing memes, I’m out… [He] better deliver the greatest debate performance in the world or… I can promise you, a lot of people won’t be giving Ron another nickel.”

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The ire stemmed from a recent Semafor report that revealed senior aides in the DeSantis campaign were involved in the creation of two controversial videos (both full of memes), one that used Nazi imagery and one that was widely criticized by both sides of the aisle as virulently homophobic.

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It had already been made public that DeSantis staffers were involved in the making of these videos, then making it look like they had come from outside sources. But the new report details texting conversations among high-ranking members of the campaign approving the content.

The conversations reportedly took place in the encrypted messaging app Signal on a channel called “War Room Creative Ideas” that’s run by DeSantis’s director of rapid response Christina Pushaw. Semafor obtained screenshots of a conversation in which Kyle Lamb, the former director of research and data for the campaign, wrote that the video containing the Nazi imagery “belongs in the Smithsonian.”

Lamb has since been laid off as part of a larger “reset” by the DeSantis campaign. The staffers also used the chat to share content that could be added to the video. Pushaw also encouraged junior staffers to make more meme videos.

As the DeSantis campaign continues to flail, it has been criticized for focusing too much on social media and digital strategies. As Semafor put it, the campaign “sought to fight a meme war.”

Others have called it a “meme factory,” according to Rolling Stone, and upon hearing about it, another anonymous DeSantis supporter replied simply, “For f**k sake.”