As the first GOP debate, scheduled for Aug. 23, approaches, the primaries are heating up, particularly between the two candidates most likely to take the nomination: Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. This time the controversy is due to DeSantis launching a campaign ad criticizing his opponent for not firing Anthony Fauci, who emerged as a media figure in 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic began.
It turns out that the "DeSantis War Room" posted a video on Twitter against the former president, which begins with images of him firing people on the hit show "The Apprentice." After about ten seconds of mass firings, the tense music morphs into a sweet lullaby as it shows a compilation of Trump praising Fauci and justifying his not firing him when he was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
While the announcement itself generated controversy, one point specifically enraged some Republicans. Some of the images that appear have been generated with artificial intelligence, particularly those in which the former president hugs and even kisses the immunologist.
Donald Trump became a household name by FIRING countless people *on television*
But when it came to Fauci... pic.twitter.com/7Lxwf75NQm
— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) June 5, 2023
Vance and Greene v. DeSantis
Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) has already endorsed Trump for the primaries and quickly criticized DeSantis for the video. "Defaming Donald Trump with fake AI images is completely unacceptable," he wrote on Twitter. "I don't share them, but we are in a new era. Be even more skeptical of what you see on the internet," added Vance.
Another Republican who joined in the rebuke was Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who has also endorsed the tycoon's presidential candidacy. "These phony campaign ads by AI must be pulled immediately," she fired back on Twitter.
The strategy of linking Trump to Fauci is not new to the Florida governor's campaign. During his first official act, he assured that his state" chose freedom over 'Faucism'" during the pandemic. "You don't empower someone like Fauci. You bring him into the office and tell him to pack his bags," he added.
The former president recently began to criticize DeSantis' management during the coronavirus, something he was asked about in the press conference following the aforementioned speech. "The former president is now attacking me, saying that [Andrew] Cuomo did better handling Covid than Florida did. I can tell you this; I could count the number of Republicans in this country on my hands that would rather have lived in New York under Cuomo than lived in Florida in our freedom zone," he replied.
