A Requiem for the Gaffe

Ron DeSantis says something objectively insane about the Fed keeping you from gassing up your car or buying another gun and nobody bats an eye. I'll retire to bedlam.

Catherine Rampell, The Washington Post’s excellent financial columnist, tweeted out some seriously crazy stuff yesterday that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said on April 1 about the Fed (43:06 to 44:30). Five days had passed and nobody had noticed. I’m still not sure whether any newspaper has reported on it, including Rampell’s own.

In my latest New Republic piece, I point out that saying unhinged things used to end presidential campaigns, even when they were “Kinsley gaffes,” i.e., uncomfortable truths, rather than falsehoods or expressions of bigotry or extreme paranoia. Those days appear to be behind us, thanks to the inability of any human to keep up with all the ordure streaming 24/7 out of Donald Trump’s mouth (or to want to). We already had Jack Torrance, pictured above, for president once; why not again? So not only won’t DeSantis be punished; he probably won’t be deterred from repeating that the Fed is coming for your mid-grade and your Nosler 21. You can read it here.