This Image of Ron DeSantis Eating Chocolate Pudding Will Haunt Your Dreams

As governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis has done a lot of horrifying things that should disqualify him from ever being president, from signing the wildly bigoted “Don’t Say Gay” bill to treating human beings like chattel. And look, what we’re about to share with you does not rise to the level of all the objectionably horrible stuff that should keep people awake at night re: the prospect of his becoming leader of the free world. But it will send shivers down your spine and follow you around like a waking nightmare.

In a Daily Beast story about DeSantis’s social awkwardness—and how it may hamper his political ambitions—comes this:

The chatter over DeSantis’s public engagement has also surfaced past unflattering stories about his social skills—particularly, his propensity to devour food during meetings. “He would sit in meetings and eat in front of people,” a former DeSantis staffer told the Daily Beast, “always like a starving animal who has never eaten before…getting shit everywhere.”

Enshrined in DeSantis lore is an episode from four years ago: During a private plane trip from Tallahassee to Washington, DC, in March of 2019, DeSantis enjoyed a chocolate pudding dessert—by eating it with three of his fingers, according to two sources familiar with the incident.

A representative for DeSantis did not respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment; to be fair, we’re not sure there are really any good answers to the questions that immediately come to mind, such as:

• What the fuck?
• Who does that?
• There had to have been another way?
• Why three fingers?
• Why the urgency to eat pudding before a proper utensil could be sourced?
• Why any of this?
• WHAT THE FUCK??

Bizarre eating habits—specifically the mechanism by which food is deposited into the mouth—are not the exclusive domain of Republicans; in 2019, The New York Times reported that after being told there was no fork with which to eat her salad during a plane ride to South Carolina, Senator Amy Klobuchar “pulled a comb from her bag and began eating…with it.”

Anyway, yeah, sorry for imprinting that image on your brain, but we’re all in this together.

Thank God the richest people in America have someone advocating for them!

Reminder: This woman has the backing of the most powerful person in the House of Representatives