“Meatball Ron” DeSantis continues to limp toward defeat in the 2024 GOP presidential primary campaign. And that limp appears to be exacerbated by his bizarre choice in footwear.
The Florida governor has faced mounting speculation that he wears heightening lifts in his ill-fitting cowboy boots. Even though he’s tried to deny it, nobody appears to be buying his claim that they’re just “off-the-rack Lucchese boots.”
Front-runner Donald Trump has taken a few potshots at DeSantis on the issue over the past several months, including during a recent interview.
According to Breitbart:
“Did you see him walk off the stage in the last debate? He could barely walk,” Trump said of DeSantis during a more than two-hour-long exclusive interview with Breitbart News last week at Mar-a-Lago. “I’m a little bit surprised he continues to do it because he had trouble as he walked off the stage in the last debate. Somebody is going to say to him ‘take off those shoes we want to see if they’re high heels.’ He’s going to have no choice but to do it if you had a really good debater. That’s what they’d do because he tries to pretend it doesn’t happen. He walks like a duck.”
DeSantis has come under scrutiny in recent months for allegedly wearing high-heel lifts inside his cowboy boots in an effort to boost his height, something he has denied. During an interview in October on the PBD podcast with businessman Patrick Bet-David, DeSantis denied wearing lifts in his footwear and claimed he is 5’11”—while also saying his boots were off the shelf Luccheses without lifts in them.
Here’s just a sampling of the bipartisan backlash DeSantis has received since the story started to gain traction in October.
President Trump mocks Ron DeSanctimonious for stumbling on the debate stage in his high heels. pic.twitter.com/JJlvDU9HAc
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) November 11, 2023
hoodie > 4" lifts cowboy boots pic.twitter.com/9xbLmDWER6
— Senator John Fetterman (@SenFettermanPA) November 1, 2023
Omg Desantis almost tripped bc of his lifted boots 😭 pic.twitter.com/nYDX8MSzCa
— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) December 30, 2023
Politico found 3 expert shoe makers who agree that DeSantis wears lifts.
1 – "DeSantis is wearing lifts; there’s no doubt.”
2 – "It looks like his foot is being lifted up."
3 – "You wouldn’t make a boot so that the ankle bends at the tops, especially on a cowboy boot." pic.twitter.com/9O8yVXnhRt
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) October 31, 2023
The Trump campaign previously declared that “#BOOTGATE” would be the “KISS OF DEATH” for DeSantis’ struggling White House bid.
As reported by the Post Millennial:
“When asked directly about why his boots look like stilts, DeSanctus offered up the implausible explanation that he just wears off-the-rack Lucchese boots, doing major brand damage to a great American footwear company. If there are any enterprising journalists willing to contact the Lucchese press team for their thoughts on DeSanctus, they are reachable here.”
The statement noted the “laughable claim” from DeSantis that he is 5’11″, adding that “instead of telling the truth and just being comfortable in his own skin, he resorts to borderline psychotic behavior by lying to the American people. Is that what this country wants in a president?
And then there’s the infamous clip showing podcast host Patrick Bet David pressing DeSantis on the issue:
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