MicroWaveRon DeSantis met with swathes of empty seats at Iowa event, photo shows
AutoTL;DRThis is the best summary I could come up with:
GOP nominee Ron DeSantis was met with a large number of empty seats at a meet and greet event in Iowa, photos shared online have revealed.
DeSantis visited Cedar Falls before he ate breakfast at the Vinton Family Restaurant before heading to a meet and greet at a livestock auction in Tama.
Tim Miller, writer at media outlet The Bulwark, shared an image on X, formerly known as Twitter, of what appeared to be a sparse crowd at Spanky’s Livestock Auction on Saturday.
Trump political advisor Steven Cheung mocked the Florida Governor over the apparent small turnout at the event, saying in an X post: "Tiny crowd for Ron DeSantis in a livestock auction venue.
DeSantis hoped to reboot his campaign following numerous controversies, including Florida’s new Black history curriculum, which proposes that middle schoolers be taught that slaves learned some skills that could be used for “personal benefit.”
DeSantis’ team also fired communications staffer Nate Hochman after he allegedly retweeted a meme video that featured the white supremacist black sun symbol.
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So he campaigns at “Spanky’s Livestock Auction”, and trump has press conference at “Four Seasons Landscaping”; WTF is wrong with these people? Do they not understand the concept of perception?
Thales
Flying SquidHaha! Holy shit!
bauhaussad nazi trombone
I was going to say, this looks like an event when people first enter and doesn’t mean much. Then I saw DeSantis down at the bottom actually speaking and laughed.
Probably more farm animals there than people.
Probably more farm animals there than people.
That’s Iowa for you.
There was a braying jackass on stage. So you may be right
There’s more people at my families Thanksgiving dinner than this
GeekFTWLegit just played a 2fort game on TF2 that had might have had more people than this photo.
I’ve had more customizable bots in one game of Perfect Dark on the Nintendo64 than there are people in this photo.
Half those people are news media
pelespiritOr his staff.
Thank you - that's the money shot I wanted to see.
iquanyini wish the media would stop pretending he’s a contender. he’s not and he never has been. someone noted he was unpopular everywhere, even in florida, and they noted it almost two years ago. anyone with knowledge on it knows this. and trump isn’t a contender either. the gop basically has no viable person to put up as potential president because the party is too degraded at this point. it’s not an actual party that wants to govern. it’s a bunch of oligarchs funding dipshits in order to rule.
The media are enemies of the people. They don’t tell truth. They only sell outrage.
People created the media and made channels and media companies popular by viewing them.
Completely dismissing the media is as bad as watching them twenty-four hours a day.
You’re a pillock of a bellend if you think media and journalism is the same industry as it was even 20 years ago, let alone 70. Like straight up childish to believe in that level of ignorance.
Hey, thanks for your thoughtful input!
I have to ask though, did you even read what I wrote?
You’re welcome. Yes. And?
I made a point, you responded with a personal attack.
I think this conversation does not need to continue, but I hope you have a good day.
This picture has made my day. Thanks
Fucking lol. I like this.
Lmao that’s not just “swathes of empty seats”. That’s “only a dozen or so people showed up”.
Don’t worry, it’s not him. It’s those damn woke liberals from Iowa that are stopping people from getting to the event with all their… wokeness. (…wokness? ….wokenness? ….wokenism?)
And the few there look like the media lol
theodewerelol arena, dude that's an itty bitty livestock market.. where they auction off beef..
I’ve seen family reunions with more people.
What’s great about this is it isn’t a carefully taken image of one section of an auditorium that happened to be more empty, you can see almost the entire seating area.
And it wasn’t taken before or after because there he is, up front with a microphone in the white shirt saying his spiel. Lol
ZombiepirateMakes you wonder how many people attended who weren’t paid to be there.
his biggest donor just cut him off for being “a bit much” with the nazi shit, so don’t be so sure he’s paying audience members.
Oh, I was referring to the media and security as the ones being paid.
I wonder how many of those attendees are wearing press credentials meaning the turnout is even lower than it appears.
As a point, he's not the nominee. He'd have to win the in the primaries to become the nominee. Those haven't happened yet.
Thus, the proper title is GOP Jackass Ron DeSantis. This title will always be valid.
Yes he is in second place in polling for the Republican party nomination right now. It just shows how dominant Trump is currently. The Republicans seem dead set on nominating a proven loser that might end up in prison anyway.
I can't imagine what it must feel like to play second fiddle to Donald Fucking Trump. DeSantis must be constantly seething.
Remember when Clintons rallies looked like this while Trump filled stadiums? Who fucking cares about this stupid popularity dick measuring contest shit
DeSantis will care, and he’s a terrible person so I’m happy about it
MethylchloroisothiazolinoneWho cares about this dick measuring contest? Defendant trump, thats who. Never seen anyone as obsessed about crowd size as him. In fact he already mocked desantis for this on his great value twitter knock off.
I think it’s a valid thing to pay attention to, and your example supports that, doesn’t contradict it. In the early part of the 2016 election, Clinton was considered a shoe in against Trump. But Trump excited his base h he filled stadiums - while the support for Clinton was much less enthusiastic. And, as we know all too well, Clinton lost.
So yes, seeing the kinds of crowds a candidate draws is one measure that’s worth looking at. It’s not the whole thing, for sure, especially when some candidates aren’t above paying people to attend.
donutsI mean, it's Ron DeSantis... Even the seats wouldn't have attended had they not been literally bolted to the floor.
PuppyI mean... his plan for the USA is basically "WOKE WOKE WOKE WOKE WOKE WOKE WOKE WOKE WOKE" so I'm not surprised at all...
On the other side, Trump's plan is "ELECTION INTERFERENCE WAAAAA WAAAAA 😭😭 LAPTOP BIDEN HUNTER EMAILS WOKE RADICAL"
Like, Republicans? Are you okay? Dont you have anything better to offer? Yeah I see Trump supporters supporting Trump even harder but the moderates are rushing away from your party. You might have a problem... and don't come cry to us "voter fraud" after you inevitably lose 2024... look how fucking shitty your ticket is
The problem is a large percentage of Repugnantcans don't vote for anything. They vote against, with no regard to who or what their votes are going to. They would vote for a microwaved dogshit on toasted Wonder Bread if it meant "oWnInG tHa LiBz!!!!!!!"
No, no, they support him for his policies!
Oh, you want to know which policies?
Nothing in particular, they trust him to do the right thing.
Sigh.
Because he’s so pure of heart. /s
'BECUZ “OWN THE LIBZ,” YA LIBRAL CUCK! FUCK YA, RON! BEAT THOSE WOKE ASSES!!'
- Florida Republican voters, probably
I get what you say and I understand it but the American people in general didn't vote for Biden either... they voted against Trump
You could place a green plant with a [D] next to its name on the 2024 ticket and it would still beat Trump because everybody is fucking tired of the constant whining and dramas coming from the GOP
So in a way, we (and moderates) do the same as Republicans... but for better reasons
It’s the inevitable outcome of a two party system. Only way to fix it is ranked choice voting or similar, but that’ll never happen because the two parties who run the government know they’d be out of power if it was ever put into place
That and they would actually have to campaign. Right now, once they’re the nominee, they get the full backing of the party and only campaign in “battleground states,” for the most part. If they were up against a dozen parties, they might have to work for a change.
Have you heard of that experiment where - and I can’t remember if it was by a cat or a monkey or a dart throw - but there was a number of “randomly chosen” stock portfolios, and they regularly outcompeted portolios under tge care of investment managers?
What I’m trying to say is I would actually vote for a plant.
There was also a study where some of the stock portfolios with the most consistent returns were from people who had either forgotten about their account or died.
I’m not saying we should become a necrocracy, but not having a maniac at the helm is a start.
That’s the part that upsets me the most about this whole thing.
It feels like most people are voting against something, so it becomes even more divided because the next person has to go even more extreme. As I look around I see it more and more, in a lot of different countries.
I’m hoping the political game has reached a point where this either slows down or stops. But I’m not holding my breath.
On one hand, I don’t usually like this criticism because so much of this has to do with the size of the venue. Empty seats in a stadium vs a packed bar are not a good comparison.
On the other hand, after seeing a picture of how tiny the venue is: lol. 
To the extent DeSantis popular, it’s only because he says and does things to “own the libs.” He isn’t a good speaker, he isn’t charismatic, and he doesn’t have actual ideas for accomplishing anything.
The people who end up voting for him in the primaries will be the ones who simply want to piss off liberals, but figure Trump will be in jail.
I think his critical mistake was trying to out-Trump Trump. He will never be Trump. He had a chance to be a more moderate and “acceptable” version of Trump. But he went way too far to the right where even other Republicans are criticizing some of the Florida laws. Like for example banning AP Psychology or putting PragerU videos in the official curriculum.